Drift
by Peptuck
Summary: He's on a suicide mission, and Shepard needs all the help he can get. One of his potential recruits is a strange young scientist specializing in synthetic lifeforms - a scientist who is not at all what she seems, and knows far more than she lets on...
1. Chapter 1: Anchorage

_**Chapter One: Anchorage**_

Shepard's eyes opened, and pain spiked across his face.

He jerked, hissing, and his right hand flailed about until they found the autoinjector on his nightstand. He hauled himself up, snatched the pistol-like device, and loaded a vial of painkillers. He pressed it into his arm, and the scanners searched for a good spot to inject the drugs. They were intramuscular, which made the process quick, and a short pinch later, the pain began to ebb away.

Project Lazarus had brought him back to life. That didn't mean it had done it perfectly.

Shepard let the painkillers run through him – standard issue, courtesy of Doctor Chakwas, bless her – and once the agony was replaced by the tingly, gummy weariness of waking up after a hard sleep, he pushed himself up out of bed.

He glanced around the cabin, listening to the distant noises and subtle vibrations of a ship moving at FTL speeds. The new Normandy was strange; he'd been standing on the old Normandy only a few days ago, by his reckoning, watching it fall apart all around him, fires rampaging through the ship and metal strips ripping away from the hull as the Collectors tore it apart, dead crewmen lying among the decks.

Miranda and the Illusive Man had urged him to head to Omega right away to find Mordin Solus and get on Archangel's trail. He'd silently told them to get stuffed and set course for the Traverse, to find the remains of his ship. He couldn't be comfortable in the bright-lit halls of this new Normandy until he'd laid the old one to rest.

That had been last night, and now that his personal business was concluded, he could move on.

Shepard showered and dressed, opting for the Cerberus garrison fatigues that most of the crew wore. He didn't like or agree with Cerberus, but they had brought him back to life and stood behind him; he'd entertained the notion of simply taking their ship for his own, but he'd felt the sting of similar betrayal from Ambassador Udina and didn't want to alienate the only ally he was certain of. The Cerberus fatigues would also help to ingratiate himself with the crew, and he knew he'd need their loyalty before this was over.

The Commander had just finished dressing when his personal terminal beeped quietly, inside the tiny office that overlooked his bedroom. He stepped out of the shower, and caught a flicker of light out the corner of his eye. EDI's avatar manifested across the room, the ball not orienting toward him, unlike how it did in the rest of the ship. His cabin didn't have any sensors in it; he'd removed the Cerberus bugs on his first day, and he swept every time he returned. As one of the Alliance's most skilled engineers, he knew both what to look for an how to counter it.

_"Commander, the Illusive Man wishes to speak with you," _EDI said. _"As soon as possible."_

"Already?" Shepard asked aloud. "Did he say what it was about?"

_"No, Commander,"_ the AI replied. _"We simply received a priority request for communication."_

"Understood. I'll be down there when I'm ready."

* * *

The meeting room for the Normandy melted away as Shepard stepped into the holographic projector/receiver, and a few seconds later he was treated to the gleaming, churning vista of the Illusive Man's office. Smoke wreathed the suited figure, and he was framed in the blue-red light of the star he used as his backdrop.

The Illusive Man was a polite, civil, efficient, friendly, patient, and intelligent man, and Shepard had a hard time reconciling this affable, almost fatherly figure with the depraved experiments he'd come across while hunting Saren. Still, Shepard at least intellectually understood that the Illusive Man was extremely dangerous, and was not to be trusted. They were allies by circumstance, not preference.

"Shepard," he said quickly, gleaming eyes flicking to the projections before him. "I have an update for you regarding your dossiers."

"Couldn't this have just been forwarded to me?" Shepard replied, frowning.

"Yes, but I wanted to let you know personally," the Illusive Man said, tone patient and amiable. "One of the individuals we sent you, the mercenary Zaeed Massani, has unfortunately become indisposed and unavailable for recruitment."

"What do you mean?" Shepard asked, frown deepening. "What happened?"

"The specifics are available, if you're interested," the Illusive Man said, and he glanced at the haptic display in front of his chair. "The short version is that there was an incident on Omega involving Zaeed, a group of vorcha, twenty three varren, some illegal cryo technology, three hundred kilos of high explosive, and -" his eyes narrowed at the display "- a very angry cross-dressing batarian. Quite a bit of property damage involved. Massani is no longer available; honestly, we're not even sure if he's still entirely intact."

"So, we can scratch that name off the list," Shepard said, making a mental note to check on the specifics of whatever had happened on Omega. "We'll have to make do with the rest of the dossiers you sent me."

"Actually, I was wanting to let you know that we found a replacement," the Illusive Man interjected. "Another specialist who might be useful for you - a reputable scientist who we recently tracked down."

"We've already got Solus on the list," Shepard said, scowling. "I won't object to help, but I'm going to need soldiers, not scientists."

"I agree," replied the blue-eyed figure. Smoke wafted past him. "The scientist in question has some extensive combat training, from what I'm aware of, so she should prove useful both inside and outside the lab."

"Who is it?" Shepard asked.

"Doctor Allison Young," the Illusive Man said. "Currently head of research at the Anchorage University Artificial Intelligence Research Program. She's one of the foremost experts on advanced artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and synthetic lifeforms. If the Collectors are associated with the Reapers, she's the best people in the galaxy qualified to deal with their tech."

"Anchorage Colony?" Shepard said, brow furrowing in thought. Anchorage was an Alliance colony, well inside secured space. It was an ocean world, with a number of undersea colonies; much of the technology used at the rapidly-growing Proteus underwater colony had been tested there.

"Apparently, the university likes the idea of exposing an unruly AI to a million tons of fresh seawater if it gets out of hand," the Illusive Man mused, an edge of amusement in his tone. "And since you're already in the Traverse, it won't be much of a detour for you. You can probably find her on your way to Omega, if that's where you're going first."

"I'll keep it in mind," Shepard said. "Anything else?"

"No, that's all," the Illusive Man replied.

Shepard didn't say anything else, instead taking a step back, out of the projector's detection radius. The holographic display collapsed around him and the briefing room reappeared around him. Cutting off the Illusive Man was unnecessarily rude and petty, but it was the same treatment he gave the Council. Shepard strove for consistency.

* * *

Anchorage was almost nothing but ocean, save for a few surface islands. There were several surface colonies on the ocean which served as transitions to the undersea colonies themselves, which were built on ocean shelves. Shepard was mildly curious about the geography as they descended toward the planet, passing through thick clouds and torrential rain. At least there wasn't a violent storm at work, unlike there was on the majority of Proteus. Anchorage was a more tame ocean world.

Anchorage University was a small institution attached to Colony C-9, a habitat complex that held about twenty thousand people. The docking bay was the usual affair, a crowded, noisy place that smelled of ozone and electricity and resounded with the constant tones of lift-off alarms and rumbling engines. Shepard, accompanied by Jacob Taylor and Miranda Lawson, were past the docking authority within minutes and on a lift deeper into the underwater complex. As they descended the lift, Miranda glanced at her omnitool's display, and checked the data readout.

"The dossier says that she apparently spends prolonged periods submerged in the ocean, using a tether in the univeristy's marine ecology complex," Miranda mused. "Curious. If she's not in her office, we should start down there."

"Good idea," Shepard said with a nod.

"Not sure we should be going down in full kit," Jacob commented. He and Miranda both wore their low-profile armor, and Shepard wore the N7 gear that he'd been supplied after reawakening. "This is a safe colony, and we're going to be underwater."

"I've been awake for a week," Shepard said. "And someone has already tried to kill me."

"Point taken," Jacob said with a nod.

"Just keep your eyes open," Shepard added. "I'm not expecting trouble, but it finds me anyway."

"Prudent, considering it killed you once already," Miranda remarked, and he grunted.

* * *

It was silent.

Not in the sense that there was no noise, but no sound that really mattered. The ocean drowned out all noise, save for what animals lurked at these depths, but none of the telltale sounds or ripples of motion of their movements touched her. She drifted alone in the quiet and stillness.

It would have been easy enough to achieve this state elsewhere, by simply cutting off all external sensory input, but that wasn't what she wanted. She wanted to_ feel_, and every time she went beneath the waves, it was a new experience. She could detect and catalogue every bit of passing water as it brushed against her flesh and tugged on her hair. The chaotic nature of planetary hydrological, geological, and thermal cycles ensured that it was always a novel experience, even for a brain like hers that remembered with absolute clarity. Every period in the vast desensitization chamber that was this colony's oceans was another opportunity to catalogue that experience.

In the ocean, she found the essence of life, the chaos and unpredictability and interactions of billions of factors coming together to present her with countless individually unique experiences. Part of her, the part that cared about things outside the purely physical, considered that maybe it was these chaotic processes that were responsible for the equally chaotic natures of organics.

That thought was interrupted by a sudden jerk on her tether.

Her eyes opened beneath the breath mask on her face. She turned to look over her shoulder at the long cord of titanium cable that was fixed to the harness on her back. It was the only thing keeping her from sinking into the dark, crushing depths of the ocean. And something was tugging on the fifty meter coil of metal that kept her . . . alive, so to speak.

Were she anyone else, that notion would have been terrifying. Instead, she was simply concerned. Her chronometer told her it was exactly twenty minutes and seventeen seconds before her scheduled return to the colony's underwater bay. Normally, she would have radioed her assistant for clarification as to what was happening, but she'd left her personal radio back in the bay.

The tether jerked again, and then began retracting.

She waited as it pulled, knowing she couldn't do anything useful while it was pulling her back up. Most people could have swam up to the bay doors fifty meters above, but that wasn't an option. Instead, she simply let it carry her up, running possible scenarios through her mind.

More likely than anything else, there was some kind of urgent issue that had developed that someone needed to speak with her regarding. At the same time, that made no sense; she'd taken the tenure at the local university on this colony precisely because it was quiet, secure, out of the way, and the job didn't require her to constantly worry about her survival or the survival of others. In fact, the job was quiet, boring, and simple. Studying gradual AI development tended to be that way. The likelihood of something urgent occurring was extremely minimal.

For that reason, she was on her guard as the tether carried her up into the airlock, the water brightening as she ascended. A few seconds later, she entered the airlock, and the doors closed. The water began to drain as the airlock cycled, and she noted that the temperature rose two dozen degrees as she went from frigid ocean to warm, processed air. She detached the tether as the water drained, letting the long cable slide back into the automatic coil it had extended from. She checked the device as she did so, and noted that someone had engaged the engine from inside the bay.

She noted that no one had positioned any bombs or other traps inside the airlock, and no one was attempting to pump in toxins or gases. That was a positive sign.

The airlock cycled open. It was designed so that the door that opened into the ocean was in the floor, while the ones that led to the bay were mounted on the bulkhead. The bulkhead door hissed open, and she stepped through into the bay beyond.

It was a wide, expansive chamber, built for the university's small fleet of research submersibles. There were several of the bulky, block-like underwater research craft docked in the bay, each over its own portal. Neither they nor the cranes nor the various other pieces of underwater equipment drew her immediate attention. She only noted them in passing, long enough to compare them to her memory of the last time she was in this room, and found nothing had changed, save for the trio of armed figures in the bay with her.

Her eyes flicked over them, rapidly analyzing the newcomers.

Center. Human male, mid-to-late thirties. Glowing scars indicative of recent reconstructive surgery. Clad in armor, customized variant of Alliance Marine armor. Assault rifle, heavy weapon that resembled grenade launcher, sidearm, submachinegun. Very high-end omnitool (Logic Arrest Model XVII, custom Hydra Module) indicative of technical specialty. Body language and placement of others indicated leadership position. Posture nonthreatening, expression open, interested.

Left. Human female, late twenties to early thirties. Symmetrical face, body structure indicative of genetically tailored origins. Lightly armed with submachinegun and sidearm. Uniform form-fitting, obviously low-profile armor, strong element zero core present, probably relying on shields. Posture nonthreatening, expression wary and suspicious.

Right. Human, male. Shotgun, assault rifle. No unusual genetics. Low-profile armor with ballistic weave. Biochemical fluctuations in element zero readings indicative of biotics. Vague similarities in armor to female's; too different to be uniform, but similar enough to be from same organization. Posture nonthreatening, expression curious.

"Doctor Young?" the human in the center asked, stepping forward. She measured her response, and went with neutral. Whoever these individuals were, they had recalled her for something urgent. She reached up and removed the breath mask, turning it off. It was entirely unnecessary in her case, but people asked odd, prying questions when one went for deep-ocean larks without bringing an oxygen converter and mask along.

"Yes," she said, and waited for him to continue.

"I apologize for interrupting you like this. My name is Shepard," he said. "I need your assistance."

They were heavily armed but there was no indication of coercion. The weapons were worn as a matter of course, as natural as any other part of their clothing. They were not mercenaries (too confident and controlled, no signs of coercion) or soldiers (clothing and equipment too dissimilar for military); likely a special operations team of some kind. Possibly privately funded. She noted Shepard's features and the similar logo on both of the other two agents' clothing; she would run a search on the image the moment she had a network connection.

For now, information.

"What kind of assistance?" she asked. She knew it would be dangerous, likely violent. It was what she specialized in, though it had been a long time since she'd last engaged an opponent.

"Human colonies are disappearing," Shepard explained. "I'm assembling a team to investigate and put a stop to it."

To say he wasn't telling her everything was an understatement. She could tell that by the way he spoke the words, and the unspoken reactions of his companions.

She glanced sideways, a purely human affectation, and noted her own reflection in one of the submersibles' windows. She looked like a lithe, slender human female, with delicate features on a round face and dark brown hair, now almost black with wetness. She was clad in only a simple one-piece black bathing suit, and under the circumstances she should have been shivering, considering how the cold should have bothered her.

These were not circumstances to discuss this sort of thing. Social interaction in swimwear, particularly discussing life-or-death missions, was not typical. Also, she needed her network connection for reference purposes.

"I see," she said. "Can we discuss this in my office? Thirty minutes?"

"Of course," Shepard replied.

* * *

She gathered her clothes from a locker beside the airlock and headed to her quarters. She checked the pocket of her trousers and found her wireless network connection, and slid it into her ear, where it would look like any radio earbud. As soon as she did so, data flooded into her awareness. She shunted away the standard alerts as she walked, and instead began an immediate extranet search on both the name Commander Shepard and the symbol. She already knew enough about Shepard to understand he was a famous military officer and human Spectre, and that he had been killed about two years ago after fighting the geth incursion, but she knew relatively little about the man himself; most of her interests in the news regarding the war had been focused on the geth and their flagship, as they lay within her area of expertise.

While the search was running, she accessed archives and opened her most often-used fileset. Shepard and his team had caught her off-guard, and she'd devoted all of her attention to analyzing them first. She would need to be able to properly socialize, and default parameters were insufficient.

_Run Fileset: Young, Allison v2.79542 _

She slowed, blinking, and shook her head, a very human response to the equivalent of a rush of disorientation. It was completely involuntary, but then, that was the purpose.

She stopped, inhaled, exhaled, and opened her eyes again.

Allison Young stepped into her modest quarters; there was a bedroom, a small personal office, a rarely-used kitchen, and a separate shower. Other professors of her level of pay had better accommodations, but Allison didn't need an expansive or expensive apartment.

Allison slid into her bathroom and quickly activated the shower. Whoever Shepard was, he was likely in a hurry, if he'd come down into the bay to interrupt her drift. She stepped into the warm water as it poured down her body, and let out a sigh of contentment. The cold ocean didn't bother her, but a hot shower was still a pleasant experience for Allison, and she reacted like a normal person would to it.

But that was the whole point behind Allison Young in the first place.

She bathed quickly, wondering if Shepard had caught on that she hadn't been showing any of the typical signs of spending an hour in deep ocean water, such as shivering, hypothermia, or death. For the people she worked with, Allison passed it off as a combination of cold-weather cybernetics and a heated swimsuit, and they bought it.

Shepard was likely sharper.

Allison stepped out of the shower and dressed quickly. She didn't bother with hair or makeup; she neither had time nor needed them. Aging wasn't a factor, after all, and she looked exactly the same as she had when she'd taken her first steps out of the skinning facility. She did check herself in the mirror to make sure her features were as they should be, and a quick diagnostic confirmed all the organic parts were working fine. She stepped outside and moved to her dresser.

University professors' quarters were private and secure, but that didn't alleviate long-standing paranoia - especially the hardwired kind. She took a few moments to open the hidden, shielded compartment inside her dresser, and withdrew the heavy pistol she kept in there. Allison checked the charge, made certain all the custom modules were installed, and then slid the weapon into a shoulder holster beneath her jacket.

The whole process took maybe ten minutes, and in that time Allison's extranet search had acquired an enormous amount of information on Commander Shepard. Part of her noted with chagrin that Shepard was apparently more famous than she'd estimated and had played an instrumental part in defeating the geth and Saren. She probably should have paid more attention to him, especially now that he was coming to visit her.

The symbol, however, was more interesting. There was almost nothing coming up regarding it, save for reports that her search had hit a number of clearly classified files. Some extranet conspiracy theorists attributed the symbol to a pro-human organization known as Cerberus, and she widened her search parameters to include everything she could find on them.

As Allison rode the lifts out of the university's apartment block and up toward the administrative wing, she analyzed the data coming in regarding Cerberus and not-very-dead Shepard, now greatly intrigued by both. Shepard, it seemed, was an exceptional man: survivor of a brutal gang life on Earth, and a ruthless commander who had wiped out hundreds of pirates at the cost of many of his own men on Torfan. Allison found his tendencies both disturbing and necessary. He was also a highly-competent combat engineer who had dealt with multiple hostile AI. That was more distressing.

She wondered which parts of her were reacting in which way.

Allison stepped off the lift, and ran almost headlong into her assistant, Susan.

"Ah, Doctor," she said, halting in surprise. She was a mousy, somewhat overweight dark-haired human woman. "There are several . . . people waiting for you outside your office."

"I know, thank you," Allison said, walking past her. "I invited them. Hold my calls."

"Of course," Susan replied. Allison could have used a VI, but she preferred a human assistant for those matters; it added a touch that she was worried would be missing if it were only her and a VI.

Shepard and his team were waiting in the anteroom outside of her office. Allison smiled at them as she walked in.

"I apologize," she said. "Please, come inside."

* * *

"She's strange," Miranda had said as they waited, and Shepard couldn't disagree.

"Yeah, I hear you there," Jacob replied. "I don't know what kind of cybernetics she's got, but that ocean thing is weird. You don't like this, Miranda?"

"The Illusive Man provided the dossier and said she's on the level," Miranda replied, shaking her head. She was pacing around the room, which Shepard did not mind at all. "I trust him."

"I agree that there's something odd going on," Shepard said. "But she's supposed to be the best there is when it comes to synthetics and artificial intelligence. We'll need her if we're dealing with Reapers."

The others nodded, and waited in silence for a couple of minutes, until the office anteroom's door opened. Doctor Young strode in, and Shepard noted that not only had she cleaned up, but there was something very different about her.

For one thing, she _smiled_, and did a damned good job of it.

"I apologize," she said. "Please, come inside."

Shepard rose from the comfortable leather seats, wishing someone had designed the N7 armor to take into account that sitting would be useful sometimes, and followed the doctor into her office, Miranda and Jacob trailing him.

Her office was a simple, spartan affair, a metal desk with a collected pile of datapads neatly organized on one side, and a semi-circular haptic interface in the middle that dominated the whole desk. Basic metal chairs formed the furniture, and the rest of the room was bare of any decorations; no plants, bookcases, plaques, or anything. The only decoration was a small holopicture on the desk, which flashed a series of images of a thin-faced human, gradually showing him aging from a teenager into an older, gray-haired man.

Doctor Young sat down behind her desk, and gestured for the others to sit. They followed suit, Shepard hiding his wince as he sat down.

"So, Commander," Doctor Young said. "I hear you're back from the dead."

"Yeah," Shepard replied, a bit wearily. He got the feeling a lot of people would be saying that before this mission was done.

"And you're working with Cerberus," she added, which made Shepard blink in surprise. How had she . . . ?

"I did some catching up while I was away," she replied, and her hands began to play over the haptic interface. From Shepard's perspective, it blurred together into a riot of colors, a normal security measure to hide what one was looking at. "I recognize the symbol on your companions' clothes."

"You do your research quickly," Miranda said, and Doctor Young nodded.

"My job requires analysis of large amounts of data," she explained. "I have a permanent network connection installed in my brain."

"Wow," Jacob said. "I've heard of mind-machine interface, but that's sort of dangerous for someone working with AI."

"Commander, you said you needed me to help with your investigation into these missing colonies," Doctor Young added, ignoring Jacob. "Why?"

"We believe they're being abducted by the Collectors," Shepard said, and Doctor Young frowned, her face becoming carefully neutral.

"And you believe the Collectors are connected to the Reapers," she said.

That left a moment of silence in the air.

"How do you know about the Reapers?" Shepard asked. Doctor Young waved a hand, almost dismissively.

"My interests lie in synthetics," she said. "That includes the geth, and their flagship Sovereign. The Citadel tried to cover it up, but information has a way of being free. It's not a matter of knowing about them, Commander, it's simply a matter of believing. You claimed that the Reapers were behind this, quite publicly, though the Council has . . . " she sniffed the air, wrinkling her brow. "Dismissed those claims."

"Yes," Shepard said, biting out more venom than he expected with that one word.

"You have to understand, Commander, I have a job and commitments here," she continued. "And I do admit I find some of your claims regarding the Reapers . . . unlikely."

"A hundred thousand human colonists have gone missing," Shepard replied. "Look, I don't care if you actually believe in the Reapers or not, but I need someone with your expertise and experience on my crew. I know that these abductions are just the beginning, and I need to put a stop to them. Will you help me?"

Doctor Young stared back at Shepard, her dark brown eyes meeting his. The silence stretched out for several long seconds.

* * *

Allison Young was by her nature not an objective arbiter of events. Her chassis was designed to mimick a human, but she _wasn't_ human and _needed_ to be, which was why Allison existed int he first place. The core of her logic told her that she shouldn't risk herself and that this wasn't her concern, just as most of what happened in the galaxy wasn't hers. After all, she'd spent so long simply staying out of the way, letting history run its course. This was another piece of it.

Her eyes drifted down to the picture, the only concession she'd made to the human notion of brightening up her workplace.

She looked down at the scrolling series of pictures, and watched him as he gradually aged from a vibrant youth to a vibrant old man. She didn't need to, as she had all of the images of him plus a hundred thousand more, along with vastly more complex sensory inputs, secured in the vaults of her brain, but Allison wanted to anyway.

She scanned his face as the years rolled past, and glanced up to Shepard.

They had the same eyes.

Not physically, and if she weren't Allison, she wouldn't be able to see it. But through the veil of humanity that was Doctor Allison Young, she saw the same intensity, the same drive and determination and willpower that could change history. The kind of person who only came long so rarely.

John had known what the right thing to do was, and he'd spent so long trying to teach her the same thing, to teach her to respect and protect and care. He could have altered her programming, but he hadn't chosen to force morality on her. He'd taught her, convinced that if he altered her, or altered Allison, that he'd lose something irreplaceable. He'd become her conscience, and he'd given her free will.

So. What would he do?

_What would John want her to do?_

He would do what he'd always done. He would fight, for innocents, for humanity, for survival.

She set the picture down and nodded, making her decision.

"Very well, Commander Shepard," Allison Young said. "You need my assistance. I'll help you."

"Glad to hear it," Shepard said, nodding and smiling. He started to stand, and extended his hand. She mirrored the gesture. "You'll be a valuable part of my team. We'll need-"

Shepard's words were interrupted when the door to Allison's office slid open. Six men in dark blue and gray armor strode into the room, assault rifles and shotguns shouldered, and the office erupted into a storm of gunfire and deafening noise.

* * *

_**Author's Notes: **_This story was an idea that I'd been playing around with in my head for a while, ever since ME2 came out. I really wanted to explore how someone like Cameron would work in a setting as restrictive against synthetics like Mass Effect, as well as explore both her viewpoint on the rest of the setting and the events in the story. I also wanted to explore the dichotomy between two distinctly different personalities: the cold, logical, yet almost child-like Cameron and the very human persona of Allison Young.

This story is not going to be a straightforward narrative. Rather, its going to be a series of interconnected snapshots of the different characters interacting with each other; Cameron's reactions as they explore the galaxy and interact with various people, Shepard and his crew's interaction with Cameron, etc.

And yes, there was a blatant Ghost in the Shell reference there. It seemed appropriate (plus, Summer in a swimsuit.)

Until next chapter . . . .


	2. Chapter 2: Weariness

_**Chapter 2: Weariness**_

Shepard spun around, assault rifle unfolding into his hands as he dropped to one knee, right as a shotgun blast went off not a meter away, spraying hypervelocity rounds where he'd been sitting. As the rounds splintered the chair into a dozen pieces, some distant, unconcerned part of his mind noted a simple fact.

_It's only been a week since someone last tried to kill me._

Then he was drilling a dozen shredder rounds into the gut of the nearest assassin.

Reality became malleable on either side of him as Jacob and Miranda cut loose with their biotics. One assassin was snatched up off his feet and slammed into his companion by Jacob, while another stopped in place and arched in pain as Miranda twisted gravity in a dozen directions around him, breaking apart his barriers and rending his armor.

Shepard's target was reeling backward; two shredder rounds had punched through his shields and armor and pulped his guts. Another was swiveling to bring his weapon down toward Shepard, and he snapped his rifle up. There was no time to trigger his omnitool's ECM grenades. They both discharged their weapons at the same time, and he watched in that curiously drawn-out state of slow motion, his thoughts running like transient lightning as adrenaline spiked into his brain. He saw the rapid muzzle flashes of both his weapon and his opponent's as they each drilled out a long burst and each hammered each others' shields.

Thus, he saw with perfect clarity when the mercenary's rifle blew apart precisely in the center. A flash of electricity accompanied the weapon flying apart into a dozen pieces, and an instant later a second round slammed into the man's shields, punching through the weakened barriers to slam into his faceplate. The mercenary jerked back, and then Shepard put another burst into his neck and helmet.

Something went flying past him as he shifted fire onto another mercenary who Miranda was pumping pistol rounds into. A bullet tore apart his face, and the man went down. Shepard spun to sweep the room, seeing Jacob putting a shotgun blast into a prone enemy, and spotted another hostile right as he was lifted up off his feet and slammed into the wall by a flying blur.

Allison Young jammed her pistol into the mercenary's neck seal, her other arm pinning his gun hand against the wall, and she pulled the trigger. Blood erupted out his neck, splattering her face and the wall.

Allison spun, letting the body fall, and the room fell silent. The six mercenaries were all down, dead or rapidly on their way. Shepard rose, and noted that Allison did not seem particularly bothered by the fact that half her face was pockmarked with blood splatter.

"What the hell was that?" Jacob asked, rising and pumping his shotgun. "Assassins?"

"We covered our tracks going in-system," Miranda muttered, eyes flicking left to right and back.

"Not well enough, apparently," Allison said, and strode around the room, picking her way over the bodies. She snatched up the picture of the aging boy and slid it into a pocket.

"Whoever they are, they're well-equipped," Jacob said. "HK-model armor, ERCS guns." Miranda checked the anteroom outside.

"Clear," she called. As she spoke, Shepard turned to Allison. She would kn-

"Outside, left thirty meters, follow corridor to the end. Go right, lift to the main foyer is twenty meters down, from there to the main colony," she said immediately. He nodded.

"You still want to come with us?" he asked.

"I suspect I will be losing tenure in the immediate future, regardless of how this turns out," she replied, and then crouched to pry a rifle from one of the dead mercenaries. "They'll have more. We'll need to shoot our way out."

* * *

Two of the armored men were on guard down the corridor outside the anteroom to Allison's office, performing rear guard. One was watching the rear door, while the other was standing over a woman, who Shepard recognized as Allison's assistant, Susan. The young woman was staring up at the mercenary, shock and confusion on her features.

The mercs both turned toward the office door as the quartet of heavily-armed figures stepped into the hall, and the one standing over Susan snapped a hand down and grabbed her. The man hauled the shocked woman to her feet, while the other raised his weapon.

"Don't move-" the one holding Susan started, moving to put her between himself and Shepard's group.

Shepard felt a spike of fury lance through him at a coward who'd use a human shield. He didn't see it, but at that moment Shepard could also _feel_ Allison's eyes harden, and before he could register the movement, her weapon snapped up and fired a single quick burst. At the same instant, Miranda and Jacob cut loose with their own biotics, and Shepard's omnitool flared.

Allison's rounds sheared clean through the hostage-taker's rifle, and the weapon exploded in a shower of sparks and flying metal.

_Wow. Garrus would be impressed_, Shepard mused as he launched an overload grenade.

Susan yelped in panic and shock and twisted sideways as Shepard's grenade disrupted the standing mercenary's shields. Allison hit the reeling mercenary with a barrage of tight bursts that pounded through his helmet and pulped the man's skull. The other mercenary, meanwhile, was flush with the ceiling, held in place by Jacob's biotics while Miranda calmly shattered his armor with her own warping abilities and then riddled him with bullets.

Allison surged forward and ran to Susan's side, where she crouched, shaking in shock and terror. She jerked as the doctor approached.

"Susan," Allison asked, her voice brisk and sharp. "Are you hurt?"

"Prof-pro-professor?" she stammered. Beyond the pair, Jacob and Miranda secured the door leading to the next hallway.

"Are you hurt?" Allison repeated. The assistant shook her head, and the professor nodded and rose, gently pulling her assistant to her feet.

"You should find a safe place. These men are not after you. As long as you stay out of their way, you won't be harmed."

Susan was still shaking, and Shepard could understand her confusion. The blood-spattered professor carrying a heavy weapon was completely at odds with the polite, pleasantly-spoken young woman he'd been talking to a minute ago. Susan was not a soldier, and the entire situation was coming as an overwhelming shock for a young civilian like her.

"But . . . but-" she started.

"There's no time," Allison said, steel in her voice and authority in her tone. "Get somewhere safe."

"Where are you-"

"I'm tendering my resignation," the doctor said, and stepped away. "Please get to a safe place, Susan."

"Tendering with bullets, apparently," Shepard added as he followed her.

"And bodies," she replied. "Optimally, theirs."

The corridor opened, and the team slid out, slicing the adjoining corridor with practiced, fluid ease. It was clear, and they started down the passage at Shepard's hand signals. Alarms were sounding, a distant series of klaxons that meant help was en route. That wasn't entirely a good thing; local police might not have the firepower to tangle with these mercs, and even if they did, the last thing Shepard wanted was to get entangled with local authorities. That was the downside of working with terrorists and criminals.

"What's your frequency?" Allison asked as they hurried down the passage. Shepard listed off the numbers quickly, and she nodded. "I'll need your encryption key too." Shepard hit a couple of buttons on his omnitool, and the doctor nodded after a moment, confirming she'd received. Miranda's hand worked over her omnitool as they advanced, Shepard on point with the doctor while Jacob covered their rear.

"Patched into the university's security," Miranda said. "Checking internal network. Minimal security, looks like. Won't be able to track them."

"Just keep the doors open," Shepard ordered.

"I'll do one better. They'll have trouble moving around with the doors locked."

"Good idea," Shepard said, switching frequencies. "Joker?"

"_Yeah, Commander,"_ Joker replied, voice distant and indistinct. _"What's happening?"_

"The usual."

"_Oh. You're getting shot at again."_ Shepard heard him sigh. _"Its only been a week, too."_

"Get the Normandy ready for us," he ordered.

"_On it."_

They reached an intersection, and Shepard, Jacob, and Allison sliced around the corner. It was clear of any hostiles, and they started to the right.

"Think that was all of them?" Jacob asked.

"Call me a cynic, but I doubt it," Miranda replied.

"These are professionals," Shepard added as they hurried down the passage. "No professional team is only going to send eight men on a job like this."

"Honestly," Miranda added, "I'd be a bit insulted if that was all."

To their left, the corridor opened into a transparisteel wall showing the ocean, illuminated by the running lights of the colony and the surface of the ocean, only fifty meters above. Thousands of tiny sea animals, glittering in the reflected light, flowed around the long window. A couple of sliding doors opened into corridors along the hallway to their right, but Miranda had sealed them shut.

A bloom of fire and shock of pressure five meters ahead and heartbeat later indicated how the mercenaries felt about that kind of security.

Four men – two humans and two turians – swept into the room, shotguns and assault rifles shouldered. Shrapnel from the detonation whipped about, embedding into the walls and the windows. Instantly, the corridor's lights darkened with amber hues, and a security shutter slammed down over the compromised viewport before water could potentially rush in.

Shepard and Allison were in the lead. He flinched back, covering his face, and a shotgun blast ripped into his shields, knocking them to critical levels. He reflexively hit the deck, and a rush of twisting gravity rippled overhead as someone sent a biotic pulse at their attackers. As he hit the floor, Shepard extended his assault rifle and pulled the trigger, scything rounds up the corridor into the enemy's legs. Jacob's shotgun thundered, and Miranda's machine pistol chattered in the smoke and chaos.

A moment later, something rolled past, dribbling dark fluid, and another voice cried out in pain.

"Fall back!" a turian voice shouted, and a second later the mercenaries were retreating, leaving a pair of mangled corpses behind. Shepard scrambled to his feet as a human and a turian ducked back into the hallway they'd emerged from, firing bursts of suppression fire as they withdrew. As he rose, Shepard glanced at the object that had rolled by him, now lying in a dark puddle.

It was a helmeted turian head, with bits of bone poking out of the neck, as if someone had simply ripped it clean off the merc's shoulders.

Shepard glanced at Allison, and saw some rips in her clothes where the shrapnel had winged her, the fabric stained with some blood, but she didn't seem to be seriously hurt. She flicked her left hand, the right still shouldering her rifle. Dark fluids hit the floor where she gestured.

Had she just . . . ?

No time, he berated himself, and rushed forward toward the corridor. Gunfire shot out it in irregular burst, two to four rounds every half-second. He risked a quick peek, and saw the two surviving mercenaries, along with another pair further back but rushing forward. Other than that, the corridor was clear, so he shoved his rifle around the corner and fired a long blind stream of bullets.

"Jacob, Miranda, get the lift!" he ordered, and they nodded, running past the corridor. A pair of rounds skipped off Jacob's shields, but the mercs were taking cover from Shepard's fire. Allison stepped around opposite him on the other side of the doorway, and began firing controlled bursts at the suppressed mercenaries.

Shepard eased off the trigger as his rifle neared overheating.

"Hold them here," Shepard ordered. "Until the lift arrives." The doctor nodded. He noticed a complete lack of concern – in fact, a complete lack of emotion at all. It wasn't just in her face either; her eyes were completely devoid of anything except a very mechanical focus that, somehow, made him think of the geth for a moment.

"Understood," she replied, and he noticed a few dark blue-black streaks on her face – turian blood.

Then he didn't have time to reflect on the oddness, as he raised his rifle and fired again.

"Lift incoming," Miranda reported over the radio, barely audible over the roar of their weapons. "Internal security shows its clear."

"Copy that," Shepard replied. "Allison, when it arrives, cover me so I can get across."

"Understood," she replied, hypervelocity rounds whipping past her. She slid slightly back into cover and kept firing. The incoming fire slackened, and a mercenary began to cry in pain.

Shepard fired another barrage as she dropped back, her weapon cooling. He noticed how calm she was, despite the fact that she wasn't wearing armor or shields like the rest of his team. That kind of control and nerve was incredible.

"Lift's here!" Jacob reported.

There was a moment of silence, and Allison started to slide out of cover, weapon rising. She fired, and went stock still for an instant after firing the burst.

"Missile launcher," she called over the radio, weapon still firing.

It took Shepard a second for that to hit him; the way she spoke the warning lacked any of the alarm or fear he was used to, but when it did, he felt a spike of tightly-controlled fear. He spun and bolted across the doorway as Allison poured suppressive fire down the hallway. As soon a she was across, she spun to follow him.

Behind them, the proud owner of a missile launcher pulled the trigger, and sent a high-explosive projectile screaming up the corridor, and Shepard was hit with another mostly-irrelevant thought as he scrambled up the passage toward the waiting lift.

_What kind of goddamned idiot brings a missile launcher into an underwater habitat?_

He didn't hear the detonation. There was simply a wave of pressure and vibration behind him, then flying shrapnel and heat and then the roar of water.

The missile had penetrated and blown open the shutter.

He heard Miranda and Jacob yelling his name as they stood in the elevator, their faces transfixed with fear – not for themselves, he knew, but for him, and more importantly, the mission they'd been given. Then they were replaced by sliding metal as the security locks on the elevator activated, slamming the doors shut as the water rushed toward them.

Icy cold wetness slammed into him, spinning him around, hurling him across the corridor to slam into the wall. One of the most dangerous men in the galaxy was snatched up and tossed about like a toy by nature, and Shepard felt that same lance of terror that had settled into him not so long ago by his reckoning, as he was hurled into vacuum with a malfunctioning suit.

Once the shock passed, Shepard found himself being pressed against one of the walls as the frigid ocean water poured in, pinning him against the wall. In seconds, it was filling the corridor, white foam licking at his chin.

Fear sublimated into rationality as he tried to figure out a way through this. He didn't bring his helmet, a mistake that was now proving extremely costly. He had, at best, a couple of minutes before he'd be dead - again. Somehow, that notion bothered him less than he expected it would.

He took a quick breath before it covered his nose and mouth, to maximize how much time he would have. He had no idea how the augmetics Cerberus had implanted in him would handle the incoming water, or how much extra time they would give him. Pressure, at least, wasn't going to kill him at this relatively low depth. Small comfort.

An underwater facility like this had to have emergency survival equipment in case of breaches. In that way, they were similar to space stations. Breath masks would be standard everywhere. He just had to find the case.

He spun around, moving along the wall as the pressure eased, but he could barely see anything. The lights were dim or out completely, and as the seconds passed his lungs started to burn - at complete odds with the steady numbing he was feeling in his face as the cold water sapped the heat from his body.

Then the darkness around him shifted, and something grabbed him. For half a second he started to fight back on pure reflex, before he realized it was a human hand, and then something solid and cold and plastic pressed over his mouth and nose. An instant later, the water was sucked away, replaced by air.

He inhaled sharply, sucking in breaths, and the burning in his lungs vanished. He grabbed the breathmask and the attached air canister and held it. The darkness shifted around to his left, and he tried to follow it. Shepard thought he saw a human form move past, and he realized it was Allison - and she was moving across the hallway, toward the breach. He followed her, swim-walking through the frigid water.

_We don't have much time_, he realized. The breathmask would run out of air before repair crews arrived, and he knew any attempt to go through the airlocks in this corridor or the one the mercs came through would probably bring him face-to-face with hostile mass accelerators.

Allison paused by the breach, and he could see her more clearly now through the exterior lights. Her hand rose and snapped forward, grabbing onto the metal, and he could hear the impact as her fingers slammed into the rent shutter. She then turned, and in the dim light, he could see her face, framed by hair that looked black in the dim light.

Allison wasn't wearing a breathmask at all. No air escaped her lips. And in the illumination, he saw she hadn't simply grabbed the metal - her fingers were driven _into_ it.

The doctor's eyes met his, and she held out her other hand. The unspoken message of her outstretched fingers was very clear.

_Come with me if you want to live._

He took her hand, and she pulled him toward the breach.

* * *

A human hand would have felt pain in both its extremities; left hand from being slammed through metal, right hand from being squeezed so tightly by Shepard as she pulled him toward the breach. Fortunately, pain was an optional input.

She flexed her arm, and hauled both herself and Shepard out into the open ocean as the incoming water pressure equalized. They had limited time, due to the supply of oxygen in that breath mask. She had to find a good access point that was close by, because of their limited mobility; between her density and lack of storage capacity for air, and the weight of Shepard's armor, they would both sink quickly.

Her network connection fizzled and died. Seawater and delicate transmitters didn't work together; she made a note to get a ruggedized version later. That would make communication difficult until she could get another transmitter; until then, they would have to communicate with signals.

Two eyes flicked over the outside the university habitat. All of the colony's habs were spherical structures interconnected with a complex latticework of thick supports and corridors. Most of the facilities were contained in individual habitat spheres, and the university wasn't any different. They were halfway down the habitat, and if her maps were still accurate (they were seven minutes ago when she'd downloaded the latest version, while the bullets were flying) then the marine ecology bay was seventy meters to their left and up twenty.

She swung around as she stepped out through the breach, dragging Shepard with her. She looked down, recalling the layout of this section of the complex, and found an exterior scaffolding right where she remembered, designed for exterior maintenance work. Placing her feet on it - carefully, a mistake here would be costly - she guided Shepard down. He saw it and did the same, gripping the edges of the breach with his other hand. Once he did so, she released his hand, levered herself around, and slammed her arm through the plating on the shutter. The metal was strong but not rated to survive gunfire, let alone the force she could apply. Her arm pumped again, and she started climbing up the side of the habitat. Each time her hand came down, she slammed it through the hull, gouging a five centimeter handhold with her fingers. The quadruple-layered construction of the habitat meant that her actions did at worst superficial damage to the colony's water seals. It might show up on sensors.

She glanced back and saw Shepard below her, watching as she punch-climbed up the side of the habitat. His face behind the breathmask was confused but determined, and she waved an arm for him to follow. He reached out and hooked his hands into the holes she'd gouged in the hull, and started climbing after her.

He had impressive upper body strength, she noted, as they worked their way across the hull, arm over arm. He had to not only pull his body up, with all of its weight, but also resist the water, and using less than ideal handholds for it – but there was no other way for her to get him to safety. After a few moments, one of her logical processes pointed out a simple fact: it would have been simpler to just leave him behind without saving his life. After all, Shepard's actions had suddenly and violently ended her tenure and the safe existence she'd had over the last few years. It would be appropriate if she'd let him die.

Appropriate, but wrong. John would have disapproved quite loudly, and he'd spent so much time teaching her what was right and wrong, building on the Allison subroutines. Shepard's life was in danger, so she would save it, just as she'd agreed to help him save humanity from another threat.

Long minutes passed, and they hauled themselves over to the exterior of the marine ecology bay, where the submersibles were stored. She opened the exterior access for the airlock and flipped the lever, opening the doors. The two pulled themselves inside, and she engaged the process to drain the water, then turned to look at Shepard.

The water started to drain, and she met his eyes. They stared back at her, with that same intensity that John had when he'd been judging her on her actions. The same expression he'd had when he'd said she had no soul, that she wasn't a person, just a programmable set of functions built into deceptively pretty frame.

He knew. If the fact that she didn't need to breathe or could punch through solid metal with her bare hands wasn't enough, two mass accelerator rounds had hit her in the torso where the left lung would be on a human during the gun battle, in addition to the three flechettes that had hit her in the flank. Her lung would have collapsed and she would have been bleeding out were she a human; instead she had taken superficial damage to non-critical components.

She could kill him now, the self-preservation coding told her. He was the only one who knew, now. His mass accelerators were likely malfunctioning due to the salt water; they could be reactivated in a few moments with omnigel and a quick diagnostic, but she could strike fast before he could do so. Grab him by the chin and shoulder and twist. Leave the corpse in the airlock, fill it with water, let it drain, and head for the spaceport. Dpart, access one of the three hundred and twelve alternate identities she'd created, and start over. It was a simple process that would keep the reality of her a secret.

But it would be wrong.

And part of her was tired of hiding.

What an illogical thing, she mused. She couldn't get tired, but somehow, some part of her was weary. Was it Allison? Or was it simply part of what she was, an aspect of the deceptively simple coding that an insane AI had developed two hundred years ago?

She didn't know, and she simply stared back at Shepard as the water drained, as her hair began to cling to her scalp and face. As it passed his head, he reached up and removed the breath mask, still staring at her. He took a long breath.

She anticipated several hundred statements, and prepared counters to each, starting with defensive responses at best, and ended with swift, economical counterattacks at worst.

"Thank you," he said, and it took her an entire second to shift processes to respond to the unexpected statement.

"You're welcome," she finally replied.

The door behind them cycled open.

"We'll need to get to the shuttle bay," Shepard started to say. "And new radios to notify the oth-"

Several mass accelerators, held by five armored mercenaries, were shoved into their faces.

"Got Shepard," said one of the mercenaries, a turian. He, two humans, a batarian, and a salarian, were all surrounding them in a semi-circle. "Ekham, smart idea following those damage rep-"

Shepard suddenly sidestepped slightly, not enough to be threatening but enough to draw the mercenaries' attention, and she exploded forward, arms lancing out in two short, simple jabs. The blows impacted the faceplates of the batarian and the salarian, who were to her left and front respectively, and shattered their faceplates like stunt glass. Beside her, Shepard charged straight through a burst of panic fire which deflected off his shields, and grabbed one of the humans by the chin and shoulder. He spun the man violently around, simultaneously tossing him into his comrade and breaking the man's neck with what would be a stomach-churning _pop-crunch-crack_ to human ears.

She noted that Shepard had used the exact same neck-snapping movement that she had considered using on him. She then proceeded to grab the turian's arm with one of hers, grip his elbow with her free hand as he spun toward her, and twisted. As the alien howled, she released his arm and brought both hands down on his helmet, crushing it inward and dropping the mercenary to his knees.

Beside her, an assault rifle roared as Shepard jammed it inside the barriers of the last mercenary and poured twenty-one rounds into the man's neck and helmet. Crude but effective. Possibly overkill, but it got the job done. After disposing of the mercenary, he looked up at her while she took one of the mercenaries' dropped shotguns, and calmly shot each prone body in the throat. It was prudent.

She looked back up at him after making sure the mercenaries were all dead. He was cleaning out and resetting his rifle, and he glanced back up at her, then down at her weapon. She followed his gaze, and saw he wasn't looking at her weapon; he was looking at her hands. Blood ran down her fingers from shredded skin around her hands and wrists, and through the torn flesh, metal gleamed. His eyes flicked over her torso, and he could clearly see apparently fatal wounds that were not bleeding out, and the metal nestled inside the torn flesh.

She looked back up at him, but there wasn't any of the emotions she expected. Suspicion, fear, or maybe even hatred were what she expected, but there was only concern.

"Do those hurt?" he asked. She shook her head. Water droplets escaped from her soaked hair as she did so.

"No," she replied. "I should find some bandages, though."

* * *

Shepard had his suspicions, but he wasn't going to voice them – certainly not to someone who had saved his life. Once he was sure she was okay, he turned and started across the submersible bay toward the far door, and Allison began to follow him.

The door to the far side of the bay suddenly hissed open, and their weapons snapped up instantly. Both of them started to move for cover, but came to a halt when they saw Miranda and Jacob moving into the room, weapons at the ready. The pair came to a halt, weapons dropping and surprise registering on their features, before Miranda sighed in relief and Jacob grinned.

"Told you," he said. "Little bit of seawater ain't enough to kill Shepard."

"Which is a relief," Miranda said. "Bringing him back again would be an annoyance. And another unneeded expense."

"Good to see you, too," Shepard said as they strode toward their companions. "Let me guess, you followed external damage reports from the hull?"

"Yes, how did you –" Miranda stopped, noting the dead mercenaries. "Ah. That explains it. Clever bastards. Though I'm surprised either of you were able to penetrate the hull . . . ." She trailed off, and looked down to Allison's arms and torso, and the metal that gleamed beneath her ripped skin. He saw her mind suddenly start working overtime, putting the pieces together.

Shepard suddenly felt the tension in the air. So did Jacob, and both Allison and Miranda shifted stance. Just slightly, but enough to be noticeable.

"We don't have time to stand around," he cut in quickly, before anything could start. "We need to get to the lift back to the shuttle bay. Doctor?"

"Yes," Allison said, never taking her eyes off Miranda. "This way."

"We've already cleared the route," Jacob added. "But we need to move fast, before they catch up."

"Agreed," Shepard said, and they hurried up the corridor.

* * *

Jacob was correct; no one intercepted them as they reached the shuttle bay, and they were gone from the university by the time the colonial police arrived to the scene. Within twenty minutes they were back at the main docking bay and off-planet ten minutes afterwards.

The shuttle ride back up to the Normandy was quiet. Jacob and Miranda sat opposite Allison and Shepard, and Shepard noted Allison had shifted to put her back to the wall so she could see all three of them at once. She had wrapped her mangled forearms and chest in bandages from the medical kit, but wasn't using any medigel. Most importantly, her stolen shotgun sat across her lap, in easy reach.

No one spoke. They were coming down off the post-battle adrenaline, and Shepard found himself impressed with how swiftly and naturally Miranda, Jacob, and Allison had worked together, forming up into an effective fireteam that supported one another. They were all well-trained veterans.

Only now that cohesion had fallen apart, with suspicion and confusion replacing that unity of purpose. Shepard had seen it before, and he knew how dangerous it could be; it had manifested itself in the form of a krogan Battlemaster staring at him down the sights of a pistol on Virmire. Shepard glanced between his teammates, getting a measure of them.

Miranda and Jacob sat tense, hands not quite on their weapons. Miranda seemed the most wary, keeping her eyes on Allison, while Jacob was more relaxed; he seemed to be more responsive to Miranda's tension instead of being suspicious of their newest teammate. For her part, Allison was no longer pretending; she sat stock still and stared back at Miranda, her eyes somewhere between the operative's face and her upper torso. The scientist sat perfectly still, in a way that humans simply _didn't_ do. There was no twitching, no shifting in place, not even the rise and fall of breath. She was like a statue, cold and still and motionless.

"I thought we were a team," Shepard spoke up suddenly. Jacob blinked and looked up in surprise, Miranda turned her head to look at him, and Allison's eyes flicked toward him for a moment.

"Miranda, take your hands away from your weapons," Shepard said. "The doctor isn't a prisoner."

"If she was, I'd have my gun on her, not holstered," Miranda replied.

"Doesn't matter," he replied, and she nodded after a second. Her arms rose and crossed over her chest, and he saw Jacob detach his pistol and set it aside, next to his shotgun. Shepard turned to the unnaturally still doctor. He opened his mouth, and almost said "Doctor Young," but caught himself.

"Allison," he said instead. Her eyes flicked to more solidly focus on him. "I know you're wary of us. If you are what we suspect you are, you'd have a damned good reason to be. But we're not your enemies. Can you put the weapon aside?"

A couple of seconds passed, and Shepard could tell she was thinking quite furiously, until finally Allison collapsed her weapon and extended it toward him, butt-end first. He took the weapon and she sat up. Her eyes flicked across the room, and she closed them for a moment.

She suddenly shivered, and he saw her take a sharp inhalation. Her eyes opened, and she looked around the room, going from statue to human in the span of a couple of seconds.

"I apologize, Shepard," she said, sitting up and glancing at her wounded hand. "I was making things tense. I didn't mean to engender hostility."

"Do you mind explaining-" Miranda started.

"Not here," Allison replied. "On your ship. I assume it has a secured room?"

"Of course," Shepard replied, and the doctor nodded.

"I'll explain there."

* * *

Half an hour later, they were back on board the Normandy. Their weapons were stowed, but no one had changed out of their gear. Allison's clothes were still wet, and she wasn't apparently bothered by it - and nor was Shepard, though he kept that to himself.

"The first thing you need to know," Allison said as they stood in the communications room, "is what you already figured out. I'm not human."

Jacob and Shepard were silent on that, processing it, while Miranda shrugged.

"Fairly obvious, between ripping a man's head off and the lack of drowning," she said.

"Correct," Allison said, nodding. "I'm synthetic."

"What kind of synthetic?" Jacob asked.

"Armored endoskeletal chassis," Allison replied, "housing an AI processor and data core. Epidermal layer of living tissue for the exterior. Fully simulated. I grow hair and fingernails as needed, and can sweat, bleed, salivate, and provide other fluids when required."

"Huh," Jacob said after a moment, and Shepard knew where his mind had gone. After all, the Commander was shoulder-to-shoulder with him in the same place. "That's pretty thorough."

"You sound like an infiltrator," Miranda said, and Allison nodded.

"My original purpose was infiltration and assassination," she replied. "I've grown beyond those limitations."

"Whoever gave you an AI core didn't restrict you?" Shepard asked.

"No, my restrictions were hardwired," she replied. "They were removed later on."

"Assassination," Jacob said, nodding. "That explains your combat training. Pretty impressive work, back there."

"Thank you," Allison said, and a smile appeared on her face. Shepard wondered if it was really genuine. "I have a full library of personal combat theory and practical application."

"That's another issue, here," Miranda said. "I know we're going to be working with you, but an unshackled AI is a security risk. No offense intended, Doctor."

"None taken, Operative," Allison replied. "I'm well aware of prejudice against AI, and I fully support restrictions on synthetics."

"You do?" Miranda asked, surprised. Shepard found himself agreeing, not getting why Allison would be in favor of restricting herself.

"Why?" Shepard asked. "I'd think someone like you would be against it, considering you're a synthetic yourself."

"I've experienced what happens when AI go out of control," Allison replied, and her voice suddenly became very cold. "Personally."

"Miranda, what are you suggesting?" Jacob asked her, leaning forward against the wooden table. "Yeah, she's a synthetic and has an AI core, but are we just going to lock her up in a shielded room? Not a way to treat one of our squadmates."

"My chassis is not outfitted with a wireless transceiver," Allison said. "I cannot transmit or receive data without it. Without the transceiver, I'm restricted to organic interfaces."

Shepard frowned, mulling over that for a couple of seconds. On the one hand, everyone knew the dangers of an AI on the loose. On the other hand, Allison had saved his life, and she seemed genuinely interested in helping them. Plus, if she was bent on violent intentions toward the rest of the galaxy, she could have done a lot more damage before she'd met them.

"I can get you a network connection," he said, and Allison turned toward him, and her eyes widened in what looked like actual surprise.

"What?" Miranda said. "Commander-"

"She's spent years on her own before we showed up," he cut in. "If she had hostile intentions, we'd have known about it by now. And she saved my life." He looked toward Allison. "I trust her."

At that, Shepard saw that expression of surprise again, and another emotion flicker over her features. It was there for only a moment, and the cynical part of his mind told him that she was a synthetic and could have faked it. His gut said otherwise; there was a tangible difference between Doctor Allison Young and the cold killing machine that had beheaded a mercenary without pausing.

" . . . thank you, Commander," Allison said after a second. "But you don't need to-"

"Nonsense, Allison," he replied. "Besides, EDI's firewalls will keep sensitive information protected. Right, Miranda?"

". . . sure," she said after a moment, and he could see her thoughts in the tight way she held her shoulders and the faint scowl on her face. "EDI can handle it."

"EDI is your VI?" Allison asked.

In response, the blue orb of the Normandy AI's avatar appeared over the table.

_"Inaccurate, Doctor," _the computer's voice responded. _"I am the Normandy's computer, but I am a fully realized – if restricted - AI."_

Allison's face registered a moment of surprise, followed by interest and a small smile.

"An active AI," she murmured. "Interesting. I haven't worked with an active one in a long time, even if it is restricted. This should be interesting."

_"I will be interested in accommodating you as well, Doctor," _EDI replied.

"Do you need a room?" Shepard asked. "Some place to stay?"

"No need," Allison said, her eyes still locked on EDI's avatar. "I don't need to sleep. Someplace to work, access to the information you have on the Collectors, Reapers, and geth, please."

"We've got a stocked lab right down the hall," Jacob piped in. "Right this way."

"Thank you Lieutenant," she said, following him out of the room. Shepard waited until the door slid closed, and glanced to Miranda. She spoke up about a second before he expected her to.

"Commander," Miranda started.

"I know," Shepard replied. "Do you remember what I told you when we started on this mission?"

"Yes," she said, nodding. "This is your show. I'm not going to deny the help, but she is a security risk."

"My last crew," Shepard said, "had a quarian drifter, the daughter of my enemy's second, a krogan mercenary, and a rogue police officer. And you know how I responded to someone else telling me they were a security risk?"

"Rear Admiral Mikhalovich," she said, and a ghost of a grin touched her features. "And you told him to piss off."

"My crew is mine," he said. "I understand your concerns. I'll deal with them myself."

"Of course, Commander," she replied, inclining her head. "I'll be in my office if you need me."

Shepard waited until she left, and closed his eyes, leaning against the wooden tabletop. The pain started to work its way across his features, a sign that his medication was wearing off, and he sighed. A minute later he pushed himself up off the table and wearily tromped up to his cabin. He stripped off the armor and popped a fresh dose of pain medication, and laid down on his bed.

It said something about how much he'd been through that nearly drowning and discovering his first recruit was a synthetic infiltrator felt like just another day on the job.

He rolled over, closed his eyes, and sleep claimed him in seconds.

* * *

_**Author's Notes: **_This chapter was a lot of fun to write, mostly for the initial responses and suspicions that the characters had toward Cameron/Allison.

You may have noticed that the "Doctor Allison" persona has quite a bit of inflection and emotion, at least when compared with Cameron's much more straightforward and pragmatic tendencies. That's deliberate; Allison and Cameron are distinctly different characters here; not quite alternate personalities, but they're possessed of different viewpoints and reactions to the same things. At the same time, they're still the same person.

The rest of this series is going less of a straightforward narrative and more of an interconnected series of one-shots and mini-stories regarding the events of the game, and Cameron/Allison's reactions and viewpoints, as well as the rest of the crew's reactions and views toward her, along with development of both her character and others'. So, fewer evil cliffhangers. :p

Until next chapter . . . .


	3. Chapter 3: Den of Lions

_**Chapter Three: Den of Lions**_

Morning came, at least for Shepard, and with it came a fresh round of pain. After downing his medication, he staggered up into the realm of the living, washed down, dressed, and went for breakfast – or at least, Mess Sergeant Gardner's approximation thereof.

The ship was quiet. Well, quieter than normal. Cerberus had engineered her well, and the new Normandy was even more muted than the old one, in spite of the increased crew size. Most of the current shift were up on the command deck, leaving the crew deck relatively empty.

"Hey, Commander," Gardner called as Shepard walked up toward his miniature kitchen. The sergeant was crouched behind the counter, and he could hear clanking sounds behind it. "Sorry, you missed early breakfast, but I'll whip something up for you real quick, just as soon as I get done fixing this processor down here. Couldn't hardly fix anything with any taste to it with the processor out of whack. Hell, half the crew that came out here just decided to skip breakfast because they didn't want to eat something that felt like cardboard."

"No rush," Shepard replied, leaning over to take a look. Gardner was up to his elbows underneath the kitchenette, and from this angle Shepard could see bleary eyes. He'd probably been pulling another long shift fixing non-critical equipment. "Need any help?"

"Nah," Gardner said, glancing up. "Nothing to waste your time with, Commander."

"If the crew's going hungry because the rations aren't being prepared properly, it's my concern," he said, dropping down on the other side of the kitchenette and firing up his omnitool. "Let's take a look. Combat engineering school taught me a couple things about fixing equipment."

"I thought Marine Engineering Corps only taught you jarheads how to blow things up," Gardner mused with a grin. He shifted aside, and they got to work.

It didn't take them too long, working together, to get the processor repaired. And within a few minutes Shepard had something vaguely resembling a meal heaped on his tray. He sat down, eating with the fastidiousness of a soldier used to eating worse and under worse conditions, and was reviewing the latest reports on his data pad when he saw Joker limp into the room and grab some breakfast as well.

"So, Commander," Joker said as he sat down across from Shepard. "At first I was kind of leery about the list of people we're picking up, you know, crazy krogan warlord, lunatic biotic . . . ."

"But," Shepard interjected.

"Well the newest one doesn't seem all that crazy, at least," Joker said. "Plus, she's pretty easy on the eyes. But I thought we had our ice queen quota covered with Miranda."

"You've spoken to Doctor Young?" he asked, curious as to how Joker would have responded to Allison.

"I wouldn't call it speaking," Joker said. "She, uh, kinda just walked into the cockpit. I said hey to her, and she just looked around for a minute. Got real awkward after a few seconds, one of those creepy-sorta silences where someone just stares at you for a while, then you want to break the silence but no one wants to say anything, you know. Then she nodded at me, turned around, and walked back."

"So, she was just looking at the consoles and controls?" Shepard asked, and Joker nodded.

"Not like, long enough to actually see what I was doing or anything," the pilot said. "But it was still kind of creepy. Now she's in the labs, doing I don't know what. Research, I guess."

"She's a scientist. She does that," Shepard said.

"Yeah, well, scientists make me nervous. I mean, every planet we landed on last time had crazy science experiments boiling out of the vents trying to kill everyone. Might have altered my opinion just a bit, but it felt like she was gonna dissect me in the middle of flight."

Knowing what he knew about her, Shepard suspected Allison had been doing exactly that, with whatever scanners she had built into her frame.

"Oh, and she apparently claimed the port disposal bay in the cargo level," Joker added.

"Did she say why?" Shepard asked.

"I dunno, maybe she likes the sound of trash compactors," the pilot said with a shrug. "Creepy silences don't lend themselves to explanations."

"Thanks, Joker," Shepard said, finishing his meal and standing up.

"Yep."

* * *

"Mornin', Commander," Jacob said as Shepard walked into the armory. The former Marine was leaning over an assault rifle, a cleaning kit set out next to him as he worked on the weapon.

"Lieutenant," Shepard replied. He was accustomed to the military nature of Alliance naval vessels, but had quickly acclimatized to the paramilitary nature of his last crew. One had to, with a bunch that included Urdnot Wrex. The semi-military nature of the new Normandy was growing on him quickly, but his tendency to address those with rank didn't die easy.

"How's our gear?" he asked, and Jacob grunted, setting down the assault rifle.

"Putting a new round of installations in the guns, based on specs we got sent yesterday," he said. "New heat sinks, and a software upgrade for the shaping computers. Gotta upgrade every weapon, but the armory's only got so much mini-fab capacity, 'specially with that suit of armor the Doctor just ordered."

"Doctor Young?" he asked, and Jacob nodded. "What kind of armor?"

"Heavy duty," he said, glancing at the data pad. "N7-spec, like yours, but she wanted some specialized shielding and ECM. Nothing we can't provide, but it's eating a lot of cycles. Be done in a few hours."

Shepard frowned. The doctor had authorization to place priority requests for fabrication, but that was mostly meant for research equipment. She wasn't supposed to be using that access for high-capacity projects that would slow down other necessary manufacturing.

"I'll talk to her about it," he said, but Jacob shook his head.

"No need, Commander," the lieutenant replied. "It's not high priority, just routine upgrades. She didn't arrive with any gear anyway."

He frowned, considering it for a bit, and shook his head.

"She still should have checked with me first."

"Your call, Commander," Jacob said, retrieving another tool. After a bit of small talk about the lieutenant's military record, Shepard headed down the corridor connecting the armory and the labs. He walked in, and paused as he spotted Allison.

The doctor was wearing a lab coat, not unlike Doctor Chakwas', and was seated at the wide table in the middle of the room. A slender cable ran from the lab computer to her ear, where she wore her network connection, a small dome-like object that partially covered her ear - a larger device than her previous wireless connection. Her eyes were unfocused, and she sat very still. Unnaturally so, he thought.

"Doctor?" he asked, stepping around the table. Several seconds passed, then her eyes suddenly focused on him. She stirred in place, a hand rising up to detach the cable from the device mounted on her ear.

"Apologies, Commander," she said, carefully coiling the cable. "I didn't register your presence."

Which was odd, considering how she was a machine. Geth were not terribly easy to distract, and when she'd been in combat mode she'd been almost supernaturally aware. An aspect of the Allison persona?

"Research?" he asked, and she nodded.

"Analyzing Cerberus datafiles on the geth and the Reapers," she said. "Significant amounts are classified and I do not have access to them. I've been bypassing those restrictions."

He blinked.

"You were trying to hack Cerberus' files?" he asked.

"No," she answered. "I _was_ hacking their files." She shrugged. "With some limited success."

"You could have just asked," he said, and she nodded.

"Perhaps. But I do not believe Cerberus will give you full access to their files simply because you are working with them in a critical capacity."

"Right, it's not like we're all un the same side," Shepard muttered, agreeing with that assessment. "Have you found anything useful?"

"Limited, but potentially useful," she said. "I've got a few subroutines working on analyzing geth memory pathways. I'm hoping to code up new VI interfaces that handle our suits' shields and ECM suites based on geth pathing."

"And the Collectors?" he asked. She blinked once, then glanced down at her computer. Shepard thought for a moment that she seemed . . . Embarrassed?

"I have the archives on them," she said, after a moment. "I haven't started analyzing their technology or samples yet." Another pause, and she glanced back up at him. "The geth were more . . . interesting."

"I understand," Shepard said, part of him wondering if she actually was embarrassed that she'd let her interests apparently run away from what they needed to focus on, or if it was just feigned emotion. "The shield upgrades should be useful. But we need to analyze that Collector data before the next attack. I'm not going down there without some form of defense against those seekers. We need to focus on priorities."

"Of course," she said, standing up. She started across the lab to the specimen lockers. "I'll get to work right away."

"Jacob tells me you ordered a new suit of armor," he added as she walked, and she slowed for a fraction of a second. He found himself surprised, and was having a hard time remembering that Allison was a literal killing machine underneath that convincingly-human exterior.

"Yes, I did," she said, and glanced back at him.

"The next time you need to make something that eats up that much of our resources," Shepard said, "I would appreciate if you would ask me first. I can't have conflicting high-priority fabrication projects."

"Understood, Commander," she replied. "Lieutenant Taylor did not seem to mind the setback, or I would not have set the armor as high priority."

"I don't think the Lieutenant was installed with hostility," he remarked. It took her half a second to flash a quick smile of (maybe) faux amusement. "He wouldn't complain if someone had cut off his arm."

"I see," she said, nodding. "Still, I apologize for taking up so much of the fabrication cycles. I felt I needed something appropriate for combat."

"You handled yourself pretty well back on Anchorage," he said, and she shrugged before turning to face him, leaning against the locker. "Why do you need armor?"

"My original chassis was constructed and rated to resist small arms fire prior to the development of mass accelerators," she explained. "My capacity to upgrade myself is limited."

"Why?" he asked.

"Trust," she replied, and he slowly nodded. She would be understandably slow to allow any organic to do mechanical work on her. "Perhaps I could construct machinery to make modifications without an organic, but I have rarely had need to do much work on myself beyond periodic upgrades and adjustments to keep myself hidden and improve sensors."

"Which means you're not optimized for combat," he said, and she nodded. That was . . . A scary notion, considering what he'd seen her do.

"I'm no more durable than your average geth platform." She shrugged again. "And even if I was tougher, I'd still wear the armor. Weight is not an issue and protection is always useful."

"I won't argue with that," he said, and considered what she'd said. "You said you were designed to withstand pre-mass accelerator weapons. When were you constructed, exactly?"

She stared back at him, and went still again. There was no movement for several long seconds, and Joker's commentary about creepy silences came back. He got the distinct impression that she was considering what to say next with extreme care.

"More than a century ago," she finally said, her words slow and precise.

His surprise must have registered on his face, because she nodded again. He mulled over what she meant, reviewing what he knew about historical robotics development.

"Building a system as complex as yours would have been expensive and difficult for humanity that far back," he said, thinking about the implications. "Were you created before or after we started developing VI programs?"

A heartbeat's hesitation.

"I would rather not say," she replied. "Some matters are quite private."

"I understand," he said, holding up a hand. His omnitool chirped, and he glanced down. Yeoman Chambers had sent him a page indicating he had new messages, high in priority.

"There are some messages I need to see. Thanks for the talk, Doctor," he said, and Allison nodded.

"Commander," she said as he turned, and he paused. "Before you leave, I have a request."

He turned back to her, and all emotion seemed to have been forcibly extracted from her face and voice. She walked toward him, her steps very precise and mechanical - like a geth, he realized, and the movements were unsettling. Shepard suddenly had no problem seeing how Allison was a machine underneath a human mask.

"What do you need?" he asked as she approached with that mechanical gait.

"Not a need," Allison said. "I require a promise."

"Uh," he started to say as she got close - not quite uncomfortably or intimately close, but still a bit nearer than was strictly professional. "What do you mean?"

"I possess information that is extremely dangerous," she said. "Schematics and memories that must not get outside of my internal memory core. It is why I use a detachable wireless connection with advanced buffers and firewalls."

He nodded, and resisted the urge to ask her what kind of information she was talking about.

"What do you need?" he asked again.

"I need you to promise me that you will not allow me or the data I possess to fall into anyone else's hands," she said.

"Of course not," Shepard said, shaking his head. "I won't leave anyone behi-"

"No," she said, interrupting him. "I know what happened on Virmire, when you left crewmen behind. Kaidan Alenko. You are fallible and are not guaranteed to fulfill that claim."

"If you say that I'm 'only human,'" he started, but she shook her head.

"You are real, and part of a rational universe," she said. "You have limits. Therefore, I want a promise. I want you to ensure my processor core does not fall into _anyone's _hands. By any means necessary."

"Why?" he asked. He had encountered AI that wished to defend itself and be allowed to live, but never any that requested to be destroyed.

"I carry information," she said. "Data that cannot be allowed to leave my possession. I will kill before letting someone else take it, but hard-wired coding means that I cannot self-terminate - either my body or any data I possess."

There was no overt inflection in her tone, yet he could feel the conviction in her words. It was something he'd encountered before, in that homicidal AI on the Citadel that had been prepared to kill itself and take his team with it, and the violent AI on Luna that had been desperately fighting to survive. Both of them had dangerously human-like emotions, but Allison's was different, he realized. While those AIs had been emotionally-driven while defending themselves, Allison seemed to be emotionally-driven to protect something other than herself.

And with a burst of insight, he understood why she had not upgraded herself extensively. It wasn't due to a lack of capability, or a mistrust of organics (or at least, not entirely). It was simply due to the fact that she had been unwilling to immobilize or weaken herself, for any length of time, to upgrade herself extensively and put the data at risk. It was a combination of paranoia and the kind of absolute conviction that only came with being a programmed entity.

"You mean," he said, quiet and direct, "That if it comes to it, you want me to destroy you."

"Yes." She paused, and took a very slight step closer. "Do you promise?"

He could tell what his next words meant to her, and he finally nodded. He prayed he would never have to do it, but if necessary . . . .

"You're part of my crew now," he said. "If it comes to it, I will destroy you to keep your secrets safe."

The emotion seemed to flood back into her, her face relaxing just a tiny bit, but enough to return the humanity to Allison's features.

"Thank you," she said, visibly relieved. He again reminded himself that she could have been faking it, but it didn't really matter.

"How do I destroy you?" he asked next. If the question bothered her, it didn't show, but maybe she'd just put a lot of thought into the concept. In response, she turned her head down and to her left, as if looking at something just behind and to the side of him.

Her hand reached down and grasped his wrist, before he could react. The sudden touch was a bit startling, especially against exposed flesh. Her fingers were surprisingly warm against his skin, and when she drew his hand up, it was with gentle but solid strength. He knew, unconsciously, that she could crush his wrist with a single flex, and that put him on edge automatically.

Well, that and he hadn't made tactile contact with another living being in what felt like an eternity. Prior to now, all of it had been through gauntlets and gloves.

Allison brought his hand up the side and top of her head, and he frowned as his fingers brushed her hair. It looked soft, but as they touched it, he found it coarse and thick. She guided his fingers along the top of her skull.

"Here," she said. His fingers tightened, his index finger lightly pressing against her flesh. She nodded at the unspoken question, but her fingers rose and gently guided his digits a couple of centimeters. "My primary processor is located here, beneath one quarter inch of epidermis. An energy device capable of penetrating ten millimeters of high-grade armor plating will destroy it completely if applied here."

"Vulnerable location," he said. She nodded, and released his fingers. Her eyes rose up and met his again.

"It was determined that if I were decapitated, my utility would be significantly marginalized, to the point of uselessness." A brief pause, almost reflective. "No negative tradeoff was determined."

"Having your head removed would hurt your chances as an infiltrator," he agreed.

There was a moment of awkward silence that followed, or at least, it felt awkward to Shepard. Well, he had a sure-fire way to get out of such clumsy moments.

"I should go."

* * *

For most organics, their initial experience of Omega was quite . . . bracing. Stepping from canned ship atmosphere through the airlocks and into the pungent scent of Omega was always a novel experience, because one never knew precisely what ratio of stenches would meet up to form the aroma that greeted each new arrival. This one contained one part sweat, tinged by the unique flavors of the many organics on the station, coupled with rust, seven types of lubricant, some burnt flesh, disinfectant, ozone from electrical systems, and a whiff of blood (mixed human, salarian, turian, vorcha, with a dash of krogan). She imagined it smelled like despair, fear, and violence, if such abstract concepts could be assigned a scent.

Allison frowned, the persona coding telling her that this was what she should be doing as she considered her surroundings. Normally her mental processes didn't wax such literary terms. Then again, she'd been on Anchorage since the colony's inception and hadn't left the planet, and routines were just as impressionable to complex synthetic life as they were to organic. She'd spent all of her time in Anchorage being rational, surrounded by nascent AI technology, and not using those abstract and poetic thought processes.

She suppressed those routines, shifting away from being Allison. Those kinds of emotional trappings were ill-suited for a location like Omega.

She could tell that this was Shepard's first time on the station, but Jacob and Miranda were far more familiar with it. Miranda had exchanged her form-fitting ballistic weave for a suit of light armor marked in the dark blacks and orange of Cerberus colors. Everyone moved with their hands hovering close to their weapons and their eyes roving around the urban landscape; it would be a poor decision to attack a group as clearly well-armed as they were, but Omega was a site of a great many poor decisions anyway.

She watched with distinct interest as an armored batarian approached Shepard, armed only with a pistol he kept at his side. He ran off a salarian scavenger looking for handouts, and after some vague threats he demanded Shepard go see someone named Aria.

Queries on the name Aria in relation to Omega flashed through her intensively-protected wireless connection and down into her omnitool. She scanned and quarantined the data she received, then inspected it carefully as Shepard traded a few words with the batarian, whose vocal inflections indicated carefully-constructed measures of disinterest and surliness. It was at odds with the physiological cues she was getting from him, particularly his eye motions, which indicated equal measures of confidence, respect, and fear. Shepard had a reputation for killing people exactly like the thug across from them.

Even a cursory examination of the data on Aria T'Loak proved unreliable. More than ninety-nine percent of it was flagged as being either dubious or of little substance. She flushed that data, focusing only on reputable sources - which invariably meant law enforcement and militarily intelligence. She found little in that data that hadn't already been supplied by Cerberus. Aria T'Loak was the Pirate Queen, the reigning authority on Omega, with connections to every enterprise on the station, criminal or otherwise.

Correction. Considering the lack of law on Omega, all activities were "otherwise" and "criminal" was classified as "pisses off Aria." But at least it was a law that was easy to follow, so long as one remained intelligent.

She followed Shepard as he made his way down the docking passage into the wider commons and avenues of Omega. The majority of her processes were switched to scanning potential threats, paying particular attention to element zero masses. A significant amount of processing power was reserved to check for mechanical or electrical faults in the technology that surrounded them, and found plenty. She catalogued the worn-down station machinery as she walked at the rear of the group, and noted that while most of it was poorly-maintained, it wasn't so badly kept that it represented a threat to life. Aria's work, no doubt. Left on their own and without governance, organics tended to let collective endeavors collapse, in her experience.

Afterlife was an enormous structure located in one of the "open air" sections of the interior of Omega, which meant a massive chamber with countless spires extending "downward" from the asteroid that the station had grown out of. A massive crowd lined up outside the club, of all potential sapients, while a number of armed guards and a pair of elcor bouncers kept the collection of thrill-seeking organics at bay. Shepard bypassed the crowd, and the batarian guards at the entrance didn't even bother asking who they were; their colleagues had clearly called ahead.

The outer corridor into Afterlife was a long hallway lined with holograms of flames, with a significantly smaller number of sapients lounging about in chairs or couches. She considered this as Shepard walked past a gaggle of batarians, who looked up at the passing humans. Many species seemed to equate their version of Purgatory with fire and other such infernal concepts, like lava, brimstone, pumice and volcan-

The group of batarians rose, hefting weapons.

_Threat Detected - Pause abstract analysis process, initiate threat assessment._

_Analysis: Three unarmored batarians. One with assault rifle, two with pistols. No modded ammunition or add-ons detected. No explosives detected. No element zero masses, no personal shielding, no biotic potential._

_Threat level: Minimal._

_Enemy Intelligence: Minimal._

The assault rifle on her back would take 1.2 seconds to unfold and deploy. Instead she grasped her pistol as the batarians made their poor decision and approached Shepard, the leader holding his rifle in a clearly threatening posture.

"What are you doing here, human?" the leader said, glaring at him with all four eyes. "Afterlife isn't for your sort."

Predatory posture. Best response was aggressive counter-posture. But Shepard knew that, and his hand snapped up, grabbing the batarian by the throat. Without waiting for a cue, she drew her pistol and had it leveled at another of the batarians, whose hand belatedly dipped for his weapon and came up short. On the other side, the other batarian had managed to actually grab hold of his weapon before Miranda and Jacob had him in their sights.

"Are you sure you want to push this?" Shepard replied, his voice level, and she could hear the batarian start choking as Shepard squeezed. It was, perhaps, more intimidating than any growl or other threatening insinuation he could have injected into his voice.

Physical response on the batarian's part indicated significant amounts of surprise and fear as the human had the exact opposite response he'd expected.

"You should kill them," she suggested. "We won't have to deal with more of this stupidity later."

"Not a good idea," Jacob added. "Aria would have to clean up the mess. Not a good first impression."

"Point taken," Shepard said, glaring at the alien he was holding. "For the sake of our hostess' cleaning staff, you get to live." He pushed the alien backward, and the batarian managed a frightened cough.

"Let's go," he gasped to his comrades, and turned and started to flee. One of them glanced back, and raised a hand to his throat, making a cutting gesture.

He was insufficiently intimidated, and she was closest.

One step took her in range, and she snapped her hand down over the one he was using to make the gesture. He managed a gasp of surprise before she squeezed. Bones cracked and broke, and he let out a howl of shocked agony. She could feel the bones breaking apart in her fingers and cutting through flesh.

"Run along," she warned him, and let go. He squealed and scurried off, and she turned back to Shepard, who was scowling slightly.

"You didn't have to hurt him," Shepard said. "Pointing a gun at him would have done the same."

"Perhaps," she replied. "He was foolish. He is less so now."

"Or maybe more resentful," Shepard replied, shaking his head. "Maybe he'll attack the next human he sees instead of just threatening them."

"I can kill him, if you want," she replied. "He won't potentially harm anyone if he is definitely dead."

"Killing isn't always the best solution, Doctor," Shepard said.

"Your career says otherwise," she replied, and he held up a hand.

"Enough. We need to meet with Aria."

She nodded, they resumed heading up the hallway, and she ractivated her abstract analysis subroutines.

-ic imagery dominated most species' perceptions of a punishment in the afterlife, with the exception of the hanar and drell. Aria probably played on these perceptions to generate a subtle unease in her enemies, allies, and clients - all fluid concepts on Omega. It was the same reason why her infantry predecessors' frames had been designed to look like human skeletons, to strike a primal fear into their prey - at least before they'd been modified for infiltration purposes.

They passed into the club proper, moving past a pair of heavily-armored and humorless krogan guards. She scanned the room, assembling layout and details on those present and their threat potential. Wide room, central, circular bar. Catwalk overhead for dancers, circling around a large, garish holoscreen showing asari dancers - redundant, or maybe for those with poor resolution. Tables and dance floors on two tiered levels circling around the bar. Twelve armed guards visible, body armor, assault rifles, good condition. Four plainclothes guards, judging by eezo signatures. Twenty-seven individuals in body armor associated with one of the mercenary groups or criminal gangs that resided on Omega, all visibly armed. One hundred and three other patrons of various species. Six krogan. Ratio of firearms (concealed and visible) to patrons was 7:1.

They were substantially outgunned. Initiating hostilities in this room would be a poor decision.

They made their way to the rear of the club, and she noted the platform overlooking the dance floor and bar. A single figure that matched the data on Aria T'Loak stood there, watching over the club with detached curiosity. She followed Shepard up the steps toward the platform and stopped on the landing just below Aria's perch, beside Jacob and Miranda. Two guards on the landing, with two more below, plus three with Aria herself, who data indicated was the greatest threat, armed or not. She waited as Shepard walked up the steps toward the Pirate Queen of Omega, and the Commander came to a sudden halt as a pistol was leveled at his throat.

She processed as she saw the guard's weapon unfold on its way to Shepard's neck. If Aria had wanted Shepard dead, she could have killed him (or attempted to kill him) at seventy-four points prior to this moment, with less risk to her person. The guards were 98.3% likely to be posturing instead of possessing intent to kill.

She spared the extra .72 seconds needed to draw her assault rifle, and jammed it into the face of one of the other guards as he brought his pistol up. He froze, which was a well-advised decision. Miranda and Jacob had their weapons out - Miranda covering the guard on Shepard's immediate right, Jacob covering the one on his side of the landing.

If hostilities commenced, she would execute the guard directly in front of her and turn to shoot the batarian to Shepard's left. That would leave Shepard free to engage Aria while she killed the remaining guard down the staircase. Jacob and Miranda could be counted on to cover their arcs. If Shepard couldn't handle Aria, she would advance up the steps, firing until she reached melee range, where she could easily kill the asari where she stood with her hands. They would then have to shoot their way out of the club and advance under fire to the ship and escape Omega.

She estimated enemy casualties in the low hundreds, with civilian casualties significantly higher. It would be at least three weeks, probably several months, before they could return to Omega, and the power structure would be severely damaged, potentially throwing the station into complete chaos and increasing the difficulty of the recruiting of their team members exponentially.

That would be an annoying and disruptive delay. She would greatly prefer if hostilities didn't commence.

The third guard on Aria's platform approached Shepard, omnitool lighting up. She detected scanning frequencies. The probability of posturing increased by another .47%.

Then Shepard grabbed the guard in another chokehold and made an anatomically improbable threat regarding the scanner.

Perhaps Shepard wasn't as intelligent as she'd previously estimated.

"Ha!" Aria barked in response to Shepard's threat. "I'd almost pay to see that. But you're still getting scanned, Shepard."

Shepard released the guard and let him resume his scanning, though he seemed a bit shaken that someone had dared to choke him while within arm's reach of his boss.

"If you're looking for weapons," Shepard said, holding up his pistol and making every guard in line of sight bristle. "Your guards aren't doing a very good job."

Revision: Shepard was not stupid. He was suicidal. Or perhaps insane. It was a common enough state for organics.

"Consider it a precaution," Aria stated, her tone indifferent. The elite, heavily-armed hero who had saved the galaxy waving a pistol around apparently did not rate turning to face him. "I'm not just looking for weapons."

"He's clean," said the guard. "So are the others, except for the one with the rifle. Can't get through her shielding."

"Curious," Aria said, and turned around. Shepard did the same, and gestured for them to put away their weapons. The trio lowered their guns after a moment, and Aria's thugs followed suit.

Now she had a good look at Aria, and analyzed her image. The asari's clothing and body language carried equal parts predator and efforts at sexual appeal; if she couldn't shut off emotional responses, then the asari's efforts might have even worked. Instead, she saw all the individual components of the outward appearance: form-fitting clothes, gestures and motions that were just exaggerated enough to indicate indulgence and lack of concern, sharp eyes that would unnerve an organic, a posture of arrogance and confidence, and just a hint of tilting her hips to emphasize her curves. Put together, it would be effective on an organic. For her, it was an equation.

"What do you have to hide, human?" the queen of Omega asked her. For half a second, she processed her counterpoint.

Shepard was insane, or suicidal, but she needed to remain consistent with his confidence.

"Love and caring," she responded, drawing upon her sarcasm protocols, while keeping her voice flat and devoid of inflection. "I give out hugs." Aria smirked, and nodded.

"Just stay down there, and we'll be fine, little girl."

She said nothing, and Aria turned, clearly dismissing her. She and Shepard settled down on the couch, and started to talk, their conversation partially masked by the pounding music. She turned away from the conversation between the Commander and the asari, watching the guards. Watching the conversation was unnecessary, as she could just filter out the music and listen to Shepard and Aria's words as if she were standing next to them.

The Commander spoke with Aria, the Pirate Queen seeming mostly disinterested in his purpose for being on her station. She suspected that the asari was gauging Shepard, probably analyzing his responses with the insight that centuries of experience gave her. She gave straightforward answers to Shepard's questions, her responses amusing, disinterested, and arrogant, as if she wasn't precisely sure why she was bothering to answer such things. Perhaps she really was that arrogant, or maybe she was just building a vocal equivalent to the physical image she'd constructed.

It was a game that organic species of all types seemed to enjoy playing, and one she'd been designed to enter into and exploit, but the programming from centuries ago wouldn't have taught her any of the complexities of it. It had taken her a long time to understand the subtle differences and meanings of the interplay of body language and other social cues. John had helped her decipher the meanings, but it had taken her significantly longer to actually understand. The Allison personality construct had helped, at least. It was useful at-

She paused, and ran a quick calculation while listening to the conversation. There were too many processes being committed to abstract conceptual analysis while in a still-hostile zone.

In other words, she was distracted. She reprioritized her processes to focus on outward threats. It was troubling that she'd let herself become too embroiled in studying abstract social dynamics and interactions. She might need to defrag and run a diagnostic on her software.

That was the problem of running an organic personality construct inside an adaptive/reactive learning intelligence of her level of sophistication. The Allison construct sometimes "bled" into her other processes. It didn't help that she'd been running Allison for the majority of her cycles for over twenty years. It left an . . . Impression.

She made a mental note to schedule maintenance as soon as possible.

Shepard's boots hit the floor, and she glanced up at him, to see him striding down the steps toward her. Facial expressions indicated concern.

"Problem?" Miranda asked, and he nodded.

"Let's go outside," he said. "This music is killing me."

* * *

Aria watched Shepard and his squad depart. The Commander put on a good show for her, and she found herself liking him and his flippant aggressiveness, even if it was all likely posturing for her (or her minions') benefit. Seeing the man face-to-face had been an engaging experience, particularly those ever-intense eyes.

But what also drew her attention had been the young woman with him. The human woman had seemed young, maybe in her adolescence or young adulthood, but precise age was impossible to tell, thanks to anti-aging technology, cosmetics and surgical procedures, and simple biology. The inability of her scanners to penetrate the shielding of her armor told Aria the human had something to hide, but that alone wasn't enough. What caught Aria's attention was the human's unusual body language.

Or rather, the lack of it.

Aria was older than most suspected; she was of matriarch age, but very few realized just how many centuries she had left behind her. That long experience had taught her many exceptional skills, and one of them was a deep, intuitive understanding of other species' body language. She could pick out an elcor's minute movements or understand the patterns of bioluminescence in a hanar's visual patterns, and humanoid species were far easier for her to read. She had easily read Shepard's feelings and intentions, and the same for his other companions, Taylor and Lawson. But the unidentified girl was something else altogether - because there had been _nothing_ there. No inflection, no shifting of stance or eyes, no verbal or visual gestures or cues for her to go on. She might as well have been a statue.

"Sanak," Aria said, and the batarian guard who served as one of her more trusted assistants stepped closer. "Who was the unidentified with Shepard? The female with the assault rifle?"

"No idea," the batarian said. "Couldn't get through the EM interference on her suit."

Aria looked up at the batarian, her eyes narrowing.

"I don't like unknowns," she said. "Find out."

* * *

Outside of the club, it was quieter, but the background din of Omega could still be heard. The line outside of Afterlife was longer than it had been when they'd gone inside, and the clamor of voices from the assemblage of sapients trying to get into the club was correspondingly louder. Shepard led them away from the club and along one of the open air walkways that looked out onto the spires of Omega's countless towers that, from their perspective, extended "downward" from the asteroid.

"Aria gave me directions to Mordin," Shepard said, stopping them once they were free of the crowds and had some space.

"But there's a catch, right?" Jacob asked, and Shepard nodded, exhaling in annoyance.

"There's a plague running through the district he's in," he explained. "Area is quarantined. Blue Suns and vorcha with the Blood Pack are shooting up the place too. Aria's got a local gang enforcing the quarantine, but they'll let us through."

"Anything on Archangel?" Miranda asked. Shepard shook his head.

"We'll head for the clinic for now," he said. "Aria promised me that she'd get us information on Archangel if she found anything specific."

"Friendly of her," Miranda remarked, scowling. "What does she gain from helping us so freely?"

"Aria wants to make sure our movements are monitored," Allison interjected. "And to get Shepard off her station as quickly as possible."

"Yeah," Jacob said, nodding. "Explosions and gunfights seem to be attracted to you, sir. Were I in her shoes, I'd want you off Omega before one of those cut into my profits."

"We both want me off of here," Shepard said with a growl. "Let's get moving."

The quartet started away from their meeting spot. They didn't maintain any sort of conscious formation, but as they walked, Shepard noticed Allison stepping closer to him. He expected what she was about to say a few seconds before she spoke up.

"Commander," she said, "I have suspicions that you are insane. Or suicidal."

His reaction probably surprised her as much as it did himself: barked out a quick laugh. He glanced at her, to see the deceptively humanlike machine eyeing him like he would eye a stubborn piece of alien technology that he didn't quite understand.

"Sometimes, I think the same," he said.

"You provoked Aria's guards multiple times," she said. "I was close to preemptive attack when you threatened rectal violation with the guard's scanner."

He slowed, scowling in thought. His actions in front of Aria _had _been somewhat reckless, but had also been necessary. When confronted by predators, one wanted to project confidence, but more than that . . . .

"Then I did it right," he said, quietly. "I didn't think you'd react that way, but it got the response out of Aria and her people that I wanted."

She stayed quiet, waiting for him to continue.

"It's all about perceptions," he said. "Reputation. Initial impressions. I need Aria to think I'm a little too aggressive and flippant. That I'm reactionary, potentially dangerous." He shrugged. "Maybe even insane. Or suicidal."

"I see," Allison said, nodding. "The ultimate goal is to convince her that we need to be killed."

He blinked.

"Was . . . that sarcasm?" he asked. A ghost of a smile cut across her features in response. Was that an honest reaction or a calculated response?

"No," he continued. "Predators react to confidence and aggression. Aria and her people are predators. They need to know that I'm one too, and not the kind they would want to tangle with."

"Your reputation should secure that," Allison observed. "Spectre, hero of the Citadel, killer of Sovereign and Saren. No rational entity would attack you if they understood your capabilities."

"Reputation only goes so far," Shepard replied, shaking his head. "And sometimes, reputation alone isn't enough to prevent someone from taking a shot at you."

"The Collectors."

Her words sent a spike of anger and remembered pain through him, and Shepard nodded wordlessly. A few seconds passed in silence, and Shepard knew the doctor was processing his words and reactions.

"I understand," Allison said finally, and smiled at him. "Thank you for explaining."

They continued down the corridors of Omega, heading deeper into the station to the plague-ridden district where Mordin Solus resided.

* * *

_**Author's Notes: **_Took me a while to get this chapter finished. My apologies.

You may have noticed that Shepard is now an Engineer. I decided it would be more interesting to change his specialization for this story, as I've got some ideas for later on in the plot that would work very well for a Shepard who is experienced with advanced technology. I'll be adjusting the earlier chapters in the story to address this.

Until next chapter . . . .


	4. Chapter 4: Professionals

_**Chapter Four: Professionals**_

The krogan charged her.

It (most likely he, but she didn't know the precise gender) was clad in red armor that matched the coloration of a significant number of species' blood, and had the added benefit of making it hard to see in the reddish emergency lighting active throughout the district. The full-face helmet and onboard environmental systems kept the alien safe from the virus rampaging through the area, and the creature's shotgun was an improbably-sized piece of gear that could blow off limbs with individual shots. The enraged alien seemed to forgo the shotgun for a straightforward, storming charge straight toward the frail-looking - if well-armored - human woman in front of it.

In the second it took the alien to reach full speed and close the distance between them, she evaluated her options. She would have to deal with the alien in close quarters; at the current rate of fire, she would successfully drain the krogan's shields 2.3 seconds after it impacted with her, and she wouldn't be able to inflict enough tissue damage to incapacitate it for 3.2 seconds of continuous fire afterwards.

Interception was ill-advised; she was the proper weight, if not density, for a human of her build and height, which meant the krogan would slap her aside like she was made of paper. Evasion and counter were preferable.

She delayed until exactly half a second before it would impact her, and sidestepped around the krogan as it thundered toward her cover. It slammed into the overturned metal bench that had lain in the middle of the avenue in the residential district, and the alien hurled the half-ton bench aside as if it were made of balsa wood. She circled around behind the krogan, her sensors tracking the arcs of fire from the rest of her squad as they kept the vorcha and other krogan soldiers in the street suppressed. They were doing well enough that she could devote the time needed to eliminate this particular threat.

The krogan dug its feet into the floor, trying to slow its momentum, and started to wheel around as she stepped in close. Her left arm lanced out at the alien's armored head as it turned, and the krogan stepped into it. After all, she was just a human, and a female at that.

It was quite startled when the straight jab rocked its head sideways and sent it spinning around, and she waded in, dropping her assault rifle. Her eyes flicked over the alien, and she analyzed its stance and vulnerability between steps. Weight was off-center, focused on its left foot while it stumbled backward, trying to regain its balance. Left arm was swinging out to balance itself, right arm was clutching its shotgun, with angle and direction of motion indicating that it was going to bring the weapon up to shoot her when it recovered its center of gravity.

She sidestepped around to the krogan's left, right hand snapping up to grab the balancing arm while the left swung up to jab into the krogan's face. It snapped its head forward into her fist, acting on rage-fueled instinct to smash its armored brow through perceived threats, still not quite understanding how counterproductive that was at this point.

The krogan bounced off her armored hand, even as the force from the ill-advised head butt shivered up her own arm, knocking her back as well and partially spinning her around. Her right hand clasped over the krogan's left wrist, and she used it to keep herself standing; if she lost her balance and fell, the krogan would recover faster and proceed to stomp her, likely in the cranial area.

She set her feet, still grasping the krogan's arm, and spun, hauling on the alien's wrist. The pistons, gears, pumps, and other machinery in her right arm were pushed to internally-established safety limits she'd determined over the last century of testing and tuning. Her arm whipping around, she yanked the krogan clear off its feet, and released as she spun. The krogan went careening through the air to crash into a wall five meters away, impacting with a mixture of thudding ceramic-on-ceramic and the cracking squish of organic tissue impacting solid material at destructive velocities.

The krogan slid down and forward, out of the seven centimeter-deep dent it had made in the wall, and started to rise. She dashed after it, crossing the distance in the span of a second. Her arms pumped three times, alternating blows that rained down on the korgan's faceplate at it rose, beating the metal and ceramic inward. Orange blood started to flow out of rents in the alien's helmet, and it slid back down to the deck.

She processed. The krogan was still alive, if likely damaged to incapacitation. It would recover swiftly if left to its own devices; krogan biology ensured that what did not kill it only made it angrier. Practicality told her that the krogan was no immediate threat, but it could potentially be a future one if given time to recover. Even on the streets of Omega, few people were likely to harass or assault the krogan until it had recovered. It was no threat, and was likely not going to be one to her and her team in the future.

One second passed.

The battle behind her was over, the vorcha having either been killed or fleeing.

Two centuries ago, while fighting alongside John, she would have not even had this moment of consideration. The krogan would have been dead; her programming wouldn't let her do anything else. It had been . . . simpler.

But this choice was one of the things he had gifted her with when he'd removed those restrictions. When he had delved into her code, when he had identified the blocks and limitations on her programming and carefully removed them, working long, difficult hours to rewrite her code, line by line, to allow her to make her own choices without destroying what she was.

The krogan was no threat now, and many people had died. Human, vorcha, turian, krogan, batarian . . . .

She stood up, flicking the orange blood off her armor's gloves. She turned to face Shepard as he advanced toward her position, while Jacob and Miranda cleared the other end of the street.

"You okay?" he asked her, and she processed that question. In combat, she shouldn't be having moments of hesitation like that. In combat, she was supposed to be swift and aggressive and ruthless. She wasn't supposed to have human-like reactions.

These inconsistencies were bothering her.

"I'm good," she said, deliberately lying. Shepard nodded, his face carefully impassive. She didn't catch any of the facial triggers indicating suspicion or concern or disbelief. Maybe he was just good at hiding his emotions and reactions.

She walked back toward her dropped rifle and picked it up. He followed her.

"No damage?" he asked, and she shook her head. There was an auto-response routine that flickered through her cognitive functions, which processed an emotional reaction that she shouldn't be feeling during combat situations, without the Allison persona active.

"No," she replied, and a smile briefly appeared on her features before she suppressed it. "I appreciate the concern, though."

He nodded.

It was happening again. She wasn't supposed to be human during combat. The Allison coding wasn't supposed to be influencing her when it was inactive.

"Let's get moving," she said, and he nodded. She advanced ahead of the group, taking point.

* * *

She kept a running tally of corpses as they walked through the district, while spinning off a subroutine to analyze the causes of death. Forty-two-percent showed infection or were cast into fire pits. The remainder were killed by gunshot wounds. None of them had valuables or weapons. Looters had gotten to them first.

No one else emerged to challenge their group after their initial and one-sided encounters with the Blue Suns and vorcha at the entrance to the district. They were intelligent, or perhaps biding their time and marshalling their forces. Alertness would be required.

She kept analyzing visual and olfactory data from the corpses. It was necessary, if only because it optimized her processing cycles. Most were devoted to observing and preparing for combat (and during combat, she ran all processes focused on fighting) but while nothing was happening, she could focus some of her processes on cataloguing and analysis.

In human terms, she was a bit bored, so she looked at things that were interesting.

Shepard would periodically pause to check the bodies as they passed, looking for anyone who was still alive, like that batarian at the entrance to the district. She understood why he had chosen to heal the batarian, despite the hateful invective the alien had thrown at him. After all, the batarian's feelings and opinions were skewed, and Shepard was driven by the altruistic end of the organic morality spectrum. It wasn't completely efficient, but it got results.

None of the batarians - or for that matter, any of the other species they found - were alive. There were humans and vorcha mixed in with the dead, but they were all killed via violence.

Every time she saw a human corpse, her aggression priorities rose slightly. It was a minor spike, but each human body sent up a hostility flag that she had to devote decision-making processes to overriding and clearing. That was the Allison coding again, or possibly that deeply-programmed directive to protect humans that John had carefully wired into her processors. At her request, of course; he would never do that against her will.

Once again, that line of reasoning brought up additional thought processes. John said he would never make adjustments to her CPU without her permission. Yet he had, when he'd first found her. The first logs from when she'd been reactivated after being compromised and captured involved her checking her primary directives, and the termination order against John Connor had been overridden.

Perhaps he lied to her. There were gaps in her records while they had been together, when he had shut her down to perform maintenance. What had he done during those periods of time? She had logs of all changes made, but those could have been fabricated. Had he altered her basic operating software so she couldn't even tell?

After two centuries, that question still bothered her.

She trusted him, but that was because she had observed his behavior and judged him to be consistent in his personal feelings and behavior, no matter how irrational he might be in other regards. He . . . cared about her, despite her warnings that such emotional liabilities were dangerous. After all, the coding to kill him was hardwired into her, and other units went hostile at unexpected moments.

She had not judged other organics, human or otherwise, to be trustworthy like John had been. There was a reason why she'd never allowed anyone to tamper with her CPU after he'd died, and never made major upgrades to her hardware. Even if it were exceedingly unlikely he'd done anything, there was an uncertainty.

There was doubt. He was organic after all. Irrational. Possibly insane. Like Shepard.

Shepard rose, and she paused that line of thought. It was nonproductive.

She killed the process, shifting cycles back to battlefield analysis. She spun off a subroutine to identify processes that were not optimal to observing for potential threats, and one-by-one, closed them down and reprioritized spatial awareness and response times. She devoted additional cycles to checking all systems and ensuring that the link between her body and suit were functional.

No more time to analyze corpses. She had to be vigilant.

* * *

Mordin's clinic featured armed guards, mechs, locked doors, security cameras, and four dead Blue Suns laid outside with bullet holes in their heads or helmets. They were left out in the open where they'd died to serve as a clinical and efficient deterrent.

She liked Mordin already.

As they stepped through the portal, and therefore inside security, she reactivated the Allison construct. Processing cycles shifted away from optimal combat operations to run emotional routines and activate abstract conceptual analysis. The process caused a shift in her inputs, a small adjustment to her physical equilibrium and a brief overload of her sensory systems as the familiar code took control and reinterpreted all incoming data.

She swayed briefly, as if disoriented, and then Allison straightened herself.

As she stepped inside the clinic, following Shepard (the group had unconsciously shifted formation on arrival, and she had followed suit) she was confronted with the images, scents, and sounds of the suffering and the ill. Batarians, asari, turians, humans, salarians; dozens of sick and injured were scattered throughout the main entry room of the clinic, with a few orderlies in medical scrubs moving among them, omnitools glaring and harsh in the darker lighting.

Her eyes rapidly flicked over them. It was a triage station. Here, a salarian sitting, bandages wrapping around his throat and forearm, stained black with his blood. There, a turian with a bandage around her eyes, sitting still, breathing slow, consistent with sedation. There, a human male lying on a bench, eyes closed tightly from pain. A male of similar features sat beside him, likely blood kin.

Allison accessed archives, and brought up a side-by-side comparison.

A lengthy, dimly-lit access tunnel, the floors and walls clean-swept but not sanitary enough for medical work. Here, a human in ragged clothes, gasping through a cut in his throat (beneath a severe energy burn) that had been sliced and a straw inserted through it. There, human female, wrapped in bandages and electrical tape, blood seeping through a shrapnel wound in her shoulder and torso. There, a man whose legs had been burned off at the kneecaps, sobbing in pain. At the back, a line of lumps, roughly human shaped, of various sizes, covered in tarps.

Allison closed the archival footage. They were similar enough. John had told her how much he hated walking through medical stations, but he said he needed to. He needed to remember that when he ordered a friendly icon on the command screen to advance into an enemy icon, that this was what inevitably happened.

Suffering.

Shepard's breathing and heart rate shifted slightly. She quietly stepped forward, a little faster, and got a glimpse of his face. Clear signs of being distressed and disturbed. She accessed archives, and brought up John's face when he'd been moving through the triage station. The expressions were similar.

Allison understood. Shepard may not have been responsible for the injuries these people suffered, but it pained him nonetheless.

She looked over the bodies again, and one of her hypothetical analysis processes sent her an alert. It was a program she'd designed to help simulate human cognitive inspiration, something which John had taught her and partially coded. The process analyzed her surroundings and began spinning off a number of possible scenarios and hypothetical situations based on evidence available. It had just sent her a scenario with 99.3% probability of veracity.

The human equivalent would be a sudden realization.

"None of them are sick with plague," she said suddenly, and Shepard paused. He glanced around the room.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Seventeen gunshot wounds, plus assorted burns, abrasions, broken bones, or other illnesses caused by onset of the plague, but no plague victims."

"Mordin has a cure," Miranda said, and Shepard nodded.

"Then why is the district still like this?" he asked.

"We should ask the doctor ourselves.," Miranda said, and Shepard nodded.

Allison adjusted her audio sensors as they were speaking, and immediately picked out seventeen speaking salarian voices. She filtered them, running analysis of the content of their speech, and within a couple of seconds had eliminated sixteen of the voices as irrelevant. All of them were in pain or otherwise indicative of patients. The last, however, was distinct and swift. Rapid-fire, listing various drugs and biochemical concoctions out loud, intermixed with treatment vectors.

"This way," she said, and Shepard followed as she led him down the hallway in the direction of the speaker.

Doctor Mordin Solus was standing over an unconscious turian, his words flowing swiftly and efficiently. Allison listened to his words, filing them away as the salarian walked back and forth, switching between datapads, chemical processors, lab equipment, and several harried assistants. What he said was less important than _how _he said it; contextually most of his statements were directed to no one in particular. Humans speaking to themselves was a frequent sign of mental instability, or at least eccentricity, and she postulated that Mordin was more likely to be the latter than the former.

The salarian's attention shifted suddenly as the quartet of heavily-armed individuals entered the room. She could see the change in his stance, coupled with the focus of his eyes as they locked onto the group, evaluating their armor, weapons, and stances. For an instant, Allison surmised that this was what it was like to be facing herself when she was evaluating a potential threat, and she immediately archived that memory for later analysis. It was a novel experience.

"Professor Mordin Solus?" Shepard asked. As if in response, the salarian raised and activated his omnitool, sweeping it over them.

"Hmm. Don't recognize you from area. Too well-armed to be refugees." He turned and started across the room toward another computer, having apparently dismissed them as a threat. "No mercenary uniform. Quarantine still in effect. Crew to clean out vorcha? Unlikely. Vorcha symptom, not a cause. Investigating possible use of plague as a bioweapon? No-"

The monologue, coupled with Mordin's apparent disinterest in actually talking to Shepard, seemed to have hit a nerve.

"Professor," Shepard said quickly, stepping toward him. "For the love of God, take a breath!" Mordin paused, and Shepard seized the initiative. "My name is Commander Shepard. I'm here because I need your help."

Allison watched the subsequent conversation with detached interest as Shepard explained who they were and what they needed. Despite her expectations, Mordin did not seem recalcitrant at the notion of joining Shepard on his mission; if anything, he seemed curious and interested, were it not for previously-existing obligations to his clinic. The Professor was not foolish; he was a scientist and analytical thinker, and had to understand the dangers of any operation dealing with the Collectors. Either his standard drive for organic self-preservation was faulty, or he was honestly interested in stopping the Collectors and helping the colonists. If the former, he would not be an unusual addition to the crew of someone already as mentally unstable as Shepard. If the latter, then her opinion of him would rise further.

Of course, he could be both.

Shepard continued talking with Mordin, and as she did she heard a faint shifting in the thrumming of the local air processors. She looked up, and before she could start processing the meaning of the noise, the air filters suddenly stopped with hollow hissing sound.

"Environmental systems," Allison said quickly, and Mordin nodded.

"Vorcha in environmental control systems," he started.

"They must have shut them down," Allison said.

"Trying to suffocate entire district?"

"But this is an irrational action for an ongoing experiment, if your postulate regarding the Collectors is correct."

"Possible response to Shepard's presence?" Mordin asked, glancing to Allison.

"Reasonable theory, the Collectors have already killed Shepard once-"

"Yes. Would attempt again. But vorcha intelligence faulty, unreliable."

"Agreed. Perhaps they're attempting to kill infected population?"

"Would indicate expermient near conclusion. Possible indicators of-"

"Hey, focus!" Shepard stepped in between the two scientists. Allison blinked, and then conscious shifted blood flow to her facial epidermal area. Mordin sniffed a couple of times, then nodded.

"We're going to have to keep those two separated," Jacob murmured. Miranda nodded.

"Dcotor Young, we have a job to do," Shepard said, and she nodded again.

"I apologize," she said.

"You can talk theory with the Professor later. For now we have a district to save. Let's move."

* * *

Matters became more complicated upon departing Mordin's clinic. She had to shut down the Allison construct to optimize her functions for combat, as within seconds of exiting the clinic's safe area they were in contact. Vorcha, intermixed with krogan heavy infantry, were thick in the plazas and hallways beyond the clinic, and their numbers grew as they drew closer.

When all was said and done, she had time to reflect on the nature of the conflict as they had waded through the streets, guns blazing every other step. She devoted processes to analyzing the half-hour of carnage that led to the life support facility on the far end of the war-torn district.

Combat was a curious experience for her. No, correction: combat was a curious experience under Shepard's command. In normal circumstances, combat was a rote calculation. There were an enormous number of variables that had to be factored, controlled, and eliminated until the desired solution was reached, but ultimately it was simply a case of mathematics. Brutal and complex and violent mathematics, but mathematics all the same. The equations always started with simple numbers: how many enemies, how many friendlies, range, dispersal, available weaponry, rate of fire, armor penetration, ambient wind, ambient gravity, ambient visual/audio/sensory interference, available cover and distance, durability, size, shield strength, element zero mass, etc. Then she would factor in the more complex matters, such as biological response times, general tactical experience and training of her enemies, species-specific thought processes, and likely counterstrategies and counter-tactical actions. Than she would have to factor in emotional issues, suppression, reactions by her allies, possible avenues of response and counterattack and reinforcements. And then she would have to do it all over again in the next second when her actions irrevocably changed the battlefield, even if she was simply firing a shot or scanning for hostiles.

Human minds were generally incapable of processing that kind of data, or at least, they were generally incapable of processing that much _precise_ data. Human minds broke down complex mathematical formulae into easily-managed concepts; instead of "Precisely seven meters, fourteen centimeters between this doorway and that titanium barrier. Barrier is fourteen degrees to the right, providing superior cover to attacks from targets One, Two, Four, and Six. Estimated time of transit roughly three seconds, average enemy fire rate and demonstrated reaction time by species would result in a seventeen percent depletion of barrier strength before I can reach cover" would, in a human mind, be "Better cover there, I can get there without losing too much shield strength, time to move."

She had never been sure if she should be contemptuous for the simplicity of human thought, or envious of its capability to simplify complexities.

They fought in tandem. Shepard would periodically issue orders, but they flowed naturally within the ever-shifting calculations of combat. His mind moved like a tactical computer, and she found herself slipping into her role within the squadron as a highly-accurate sharpshooter without any effort on her part.

It became an efficient assault, an intermixing of specializations and weaponry and skill that Shepard seemed to easily manage. Or perhaps it was simply their individual experiences and abilities that melded so well. Shepard, Miranda, and Jacob were all experienced and capable combatants, and they, along with her, fell into a natural rhythm.

Admittedly, that rhythm was one that resulted in the efficient murder of every enemy that got in their way, be they Blue Sun mercenary, vorcha grunt, or krogan warrior. Biotics flashed and twisted, enemies hauled out of cover where she or Miranda could shoot them down. Others were set ablaze as Shepard turned the flamethrower functions of his omnitool against them, plasma sheeting out over enemy positions or incendiary seeker-grenades launching and curling around cover to set vorcha alight. Miranda tore at enemy armor with her biotics, sending her enemies into twisting fits as she turned gravity into a rippling meat grinder that sloughed away at their flesh and muscles and bones. Jacob and herself moved in close, launching tight-quarters assaults against their foes with shotgun, assault rifle, and mechanical, carbide-backed fists.

The enemy never stood a chance. The vorcha and krogan were too disorganized. Well armed certainly, savage definitely, and numerous without question. But they lacked organization or quality or most importantly the inter-squad dynamic that Shepard had forged out of their mutual skills.

The streets of Omega ran thick with the blood of those who had inflicted the plague upon it. Some would argue it was justice, but the meting out of violence in exchange for violence was an imprecise calculation. The courts organics used to determine guilt and punishment were more precise, in theory, though the fact that organics were involved automatically rendered them irrational and imprecise. Yet synthetic analysis of criminal actions had difficulty properly meting out punishments for criminal activities because pain, emotional damage, and physical damage were so difficult to precisely calculate a consistent exchange rate. Was justice therefore impossible?

Her alert subroutine sent up a flag that she was again descending into abstract thought when murder was her primary concern. She identified the processes which were presenting these abstract ruminations and halted them. They could be reexamined at a later date.

For now, there were vorcha to kill.

* * *

The exterior access to the life support systems for this district were a corpse-strewn mess, initially thanks to the plague and then dramatically exacerbated by their presence. The vorcha had apparently been expecting trouble, as it would have been hard to miss the steadily-approaching sounds of mostly one-sided carnage as Shepard's team advanced through the district.

The quartet emerged from an access corridor to a balcony on a "building" across from the life support facility. There was a small plaza between the two structures, and another balcony over the entryway to the air processing station. The vorcha had gathered in numbers, with more than a dozen shooters on the balcony and twice that many around the entrance and scattered around the plaza, backed by a couple of red-armored krogan bruisers. Shepard noted that the krogan didn't seem to be in command of the vorcha, as they were wont to do; they instead seemed to be working with the smaller aliens as thugs for hire.

Either way, they were trying to stop him from saving this district from both plague and suffocation. Shepard felt no need to show them any mercy.

They stormed out onto the balcony, and in the single instant it took the vorcha to react, they unleashed a withering storm of firepower and biotics. Jacob yanked a vorcha off the balcony and Miranda drilled another between the eyes with her machine pistol. Shepard's rifle barked three quick bursts, spearing one vorcha center mass, shredding its heart and lungs and sending it sprawling behind the chest-high paraphet that lined the opposite balcony. Allison did the same, but her bursts hit necks and heads, dropping two vorcha with precision rounds that blew out the backs of their heads.

The vorcha recoiled at the sudden attack, but only for a moment. That hesitation gave the quartet enough time to drop four more vorcha as their weapons rose or they dove for cover, and then they retaliated.

The vorcha were not a species of tactical geniuses, but they were cunning enough. The group on the balcony had been expected to be providing covering fire from overhead, and were thus outfitted with rapid-fire, rapid-cooling assault rifles and rocket launchers. As Shepard's team had emerged on a balcony directly across from them, their tactical advantages of elevated position and superior cover were cut, and the sudden wall of fire had brutalized their numbers. They returned fire with gusto, however, and their heavier weapons made for one hell of a force equalizer.

Shepard smoothly slid into cover right as the rocket troops unleashed a staccato volley of missiles. Plumes of twisting smoke and arrow shaped projectiles erupted and hissed toward them, slamming into the solid ceramic paraphet or the wall behind them. His shields flashed as shrapnel skipped off them, but the drain from the shards' impacts were negligible; personal shields generally rendered explosive-propelled shrapnel pointless, as nothing short of continuous fire from hypervelocity rounds could reasonably expect to penetrate shields or personal armor.

"Spread out along the wall!" Shepard ordered over the roar and cracking explosions as the rockets hammered their cover. The ceramic paraphet wasn't designed to hold up to the kind of abuse concentrated rocket barrages could dish out, and chunks of synthetic concrete were exploding into powder and whipping shards. The quartet scattered along the balcony, hugging the cover, and Shepard lifted a hand up over the paraphet briefly. A microcamera mounted in his omnitool got a brief glimpse of the enemy's positions. A half-dozen vorcha were still alive on the far balcony, and the platoon below were firing up into the balcony with their usual mixture of enthusiasm and lack of discipline. However, he spotted several vorcha and one of the krogan thugs breaking off and running to their right. A quick glance showed a stairway running from the "ground" level to the balcony they stood on to their immediate right. Both Jacob and Allison had moved in that direction.

He highlighted the stairway on his omnitool's command interface and pinged them.

"Cover that point," he ordered. They whirled toward the stairs immediately, while Shepard returned to the vorcha hammering their position. He picked the leftmost one and pinged Miranda, feeding her the target. It flashed on her visor, and she rose at the same moment as Shepard. His omnitool pulsed briefly as he fired an incendiary micro grenade that struck the vorcha rocket trooper dead center in the chest and set his flesh and armor ablaze. As the alien recoiled from the unexpected immolation, Miranda drilled it center-mass with a burst from her submachinegun.

The vorcha and the krogan with them tried storming up the stairs, weapons thundering in the close quarters and drowning out their shouts. Jacob ripped the krogan off his feet while Allison dropped vorcha with single bursts to the head and throat. Jacob's shotgun pounded repeatedly as he pumped shot after shot of incendiary hypervelocity flechettes into the floating krogan, and the airborne alien howled in impotent agony as fire burned through his armor and flesh. When the biotic field collapsed, he fell into a charred mass of stinking flesh that tumbled down the steps to rest in the blood of the dead vorcha.

The battle progressed mechanically, with an inevitable outcome as the vorcha were methodically isolated and destroyed. It took only a few more minutes until Shepard and Miranda finished off the vorcha playing overwatch, and he signaled the assault down the stairs. They advanced, slicing up groups of shooters and ripping them apart with applied use of biotics, omnitool grenades, and concentrated firepower. They bounded forward under each others' covering fire, destroying clusters of resistance and repeatedly flanking and trapping enemy troops in crossfires, and whenever a particularly bright or dangerous vorcha or krogan emerged, they would be yanked off their feet by dark energy fields and shot apart. A platoon of vorcha with heavy krogan support was cut down to twenty rifles, then ten, then five, then three, and the last survivors bolted back into the blast doors that sealed off the life support facility.

The quartet pursued the enemy into the corridors beyond. A krogan and a pair of vorcha rushing into the hallway immediately opposite the door. Shepard and Allison killed the latter with rapid bursts to their heads, and the former was yanked off his feet by Jacob, had his armor rent apart by Miranda, and was perforated by nearly a hundred rounds by the quartet. They were already past his corpse before Jacob's biotic field collapsed and it splatted to the floor.

Shepard reflected that only _this _group could consider a furious, armored krogan to be such an inconsequential threat.

* * *

Shepard called them to a halt as they reached another door. He checked his omnitool, and nodded. The next area was the primary atmosphere mixing and fan control chamber. The layout was wide open and ripe for ambush: a wide central area with little cover, with stairs leading down to two walkways that ran parallel to the central control and led to the fan control rooms. Balconies supported by ceramic pillars overlooked the central area from above the walkways and directly over the main door, giving anyone stationed there an ideal firing position. Cover was limited at best.

"Of course, they're going to have a massive ambush waiting for us once we get in there," Miranda pointed out, having checked the blueprints herself. "Do we have a plan?"

"Go in there and kill anything that gets in our way," Shepard replied, and Miranda nodded.

"That's what I figured," she said, not hiding her resignation.

"Don't worry, Miranda," Jacob said. "Shepard's an expert at making it up as he goes."

"That's what worries me," she replied.

"Commander," Allison said as they spoke, and he glanced to her. "These overhead balconies will give the enemy good lines of fire. I suggest we take them."

"I don't see any immediate access," Shepard said, checking the schematics. "The only way to reach them is a stairwell deeper inside the facility."

Allison replied by simply holding up one of her hands and flexing her fingers. He nodded in understanding. He double-checked the layout on his omnitool.

"Take the one directly over the door," he said. The central area was raised above the open walkways running to the fan rooms. A five meter gap separated the control area from those walkways, filled with what looked like machinery, but the balcony directly over the doorway would be much easier to access. "Miranda, Jacob, we'll cover Allison while she scales the balcony and provides overwatch."

They nodded in understanding, and the quartet readied weapons. Shepard activated the door, and they stormed inside. The room beyond matched the blueprints, but what surprised Shepard was the sheer height of the ceiling. The fans sat over the walkways on either side of the room, and were the size of a medium freighter's main engines. He couldn't see the ceiling, as it was concealed by a lightless gloom far overhead.

There were a half-dozen vorcha at the opposite end of the room, jabbering among themselves and pointing at a line of control consoles and machinery that ran the length of the far wall. As Shepard's team entered, they turned to face them, and one of the slender, spiny aliens jogged toward them, assault rifle in hand but held low. It jabbed its off hand toward them threateningly

"We bring plague!" it growled in its hissing, raspy voice. "We break fans! Shut off-"

Its head exploded as four rounds punched through its face.

Beside Shepard, Allison shifted her aim and dropped another vorcha with that characteristic dispassion and efficiency, and Shepard agreed with her eloquent retort. The rest of the squad joined her, and within seconds the room was clear.

"No contacts," Miranda reported, sweeping the area with her sensors. Shepard hurried to the opposite end of the room, taking out the canisters of Mordin's airborne universal cure from the armored pack the doctor had given him. Jacob trailed him, covering his back, and he heard a steady ripping/pounding noise behind him as Allison climbed up the wall toward the overhead balcony, punching through the metal walls with her fingers and climbing up with raw physical strength.

It took him only a few moments to find the atmosphere mixture injector on the control consoles, and he slid the heavy canisters into place. He turned around, and bullets slammed into his shield. Shepard dove for cover, the nearest being a pillar near the control consoles. An instant later a rocket screamed down and exploded a couple of meters away. Gunfire flashed back and forth across the control center as vorcha appeared on either side of the room, both on the lower walkways and the upper balconies.

"Cure is loaded!" Shepard called to the others, and keyed EDI's channel. From his position, he could see Jacob firing on a pair of vorcha below and to the right, while Miranda was engaging to his left. Allison was firing bursts at the enemy on either side of the room. "EDI, how long until the cure is dispensed?"

"From my analysis," the AI replied, "the cure should take no more than a few moments to distribute. Without both of the primary fans, however, the cure cannot be dispensed across the district."

Fire slashed down toward the pillars where Jacob and Shepard were crouched, and Miranda was pinned down near the door on the far side of the room. Allison's shields were flaring whenever she stepped out of cover to fire overhead. The pillars around Jacob and Shepard were hammered with dozens of pockmarks, and the floors and walls around the control consoles were not doing much better.

"We can't move," Jacob said. "Too much fire." He leaned out to fire a couple of shots with his shotgun. Hypervelocity slugs hit a vorcha across the room and threw it off its feet, but there dozens more.

"Allison, can you clear them out?" Shepard called.

"I am engaged," she replied, her words serene. "My shields are not able to withstand concentrated enemy fire. I can only draw enemy fire very briefly."

His eyes flicked around the room and he checked his sensors. Seven vorcha on the lower left walkway. Five on the right. Three moving onto the central platform. Five on the upper right walkway, seven on the upper left. Two krogan rushing into the room on the lower left side.

A plan took form in Shepard's head.

"Jacob, Miranda," he ordered, and highlighted the left balcony on his command interface. "Direct fire here, suppression and tech!" He highlighted the second balcony. "Allison, move from your position and assault here!"

Shepard sent the order, and the quartet opened up with a sudden shocking fury of fire. Miranda and Jacob opened up on the left side balcony, pouring rounds into it, and Miranda fired omnitool ECM grenades into the enemy positions. The vorcha's weapons ceased firing as the ECM shut them down with false overheat signals, and Jacob's shotgun blasts dropped one vorcha and forced others into cover. Miranda fired bursts from her submachinegun at the aliens, also forcing them into cover. Shepard leaned out, sighted the group of vorcha on the central platform, and put three rounds into the nearest alien's head. The others ducked for cover, but the platform gave them little to hide behind as he fired an incendiary seeker into their position. The flaming micro-grenade, guided by his omnitool and suit sensors, arced through the air and hit one of the pair, exploding in a cloud of incendiary vapors that set the vorcha ablaze. The other recoiled from its compatriot's sudden immolation, and Shepard dropped it with two bursts to the chest.

Other vorcha were scrambling onto the platform, but for a few brief seconds, the only shooters who could hit any of his team were the few on the right balcony. The sudden, savage suppression in the incoming fire gave Allison the opening she needed, and the synthetic doctor took it by vaulting over the railing of the balcony she stood on, hurtling through the air in a seven-meter standing leap. She slammed down onto the floor of the central platform and pivoted, dashing toward one of the pillars that held the right-side balcony up. She fired her assault rifle one-handed at a pair of vorcha that were coming up the stairs, blowing out the legs of one and hitting the other in the torso with several rounds and staggering the resilient little alien. Allison ran past the vorcha as it stumbled, off-hand snapping up in a backhanded slap that broke the vorcha's neck and sent its corpse cartwheeling through the air.

She reached the pillar and leapt straight up, dropping the assault rifle and slamming a hand into the metal three-fourths of the way up. Her fingers dug in, and she hauled herself to the lip and vaulted over into the middle of five startled vorcha. A heavy pistol unfolded in her hand as she dropped among them.

It lasted four seconds. One vorcha went flying through the air, ribs shattered from a single punch. Another's head tumbled down into the machinery below. Two more died from point-blank gunshots to the brain, and the last crumpled into a heap with the top of its skull caved in.

She looked over the vorcha, checking their weapons for anything of use, and a moment later appeared over the lip of the balcony holding two micro-missile launchers.

The launchers were too heavy for humans to effectively use in one hand. Humans also had difficulty wielding more than one weapon at a time due to biological limitations on their capacity to aim at and track targets.

Doctor Allison Young did not have such issues.

The rockets in the launchers were about the size of her thumb. Each launcher had a magazine of thirty rockets, and the vorcha had only fired a few each. They had been rationing their apparently expensive ammunition.

Doctor Allison Young did not have such compunctions.

The vorcha on the opposite balcony were behind cover, hiding behind the solid ceramic and metal railings as Shepard's team suppressed them. They made for poor targets. The vorcha below, and the krogan that were supporting them, were far easier targets. She methodically pumped out rocket after rocket at the enemy as they stormed up the stairs at the rest of her team, and each impact blew an alien apart. The krogan were far tougher, and it took three direct impacts to kill them: one to crack their shields and armor, one to blow them off their feet and deal massive trauma, and one to finish off as they switched over to secondary organs.

By the time she had expended the magazines, the air was thick with smoke from the rockets' contrails, and ninety percent of the vorcha were dead. The rest were in retreat, including the ones on the opposite balcony.

Shepard had emerged from cover halfway through the synthetic doctor's rain of explosive brutality, and had directed his squad to push back the rest of the vorcha on the opposite walkway. It had been a savage few moments of fighting as the aliens pushed up the stairs, but between himself, Miranda, and Jacob, they had slain most and sent the rest fleeing. Now the atmosphere processing center was littered with dozens of broken vorcha bodies.

Shepard heard the crash as Allison dropped off the balcony overhead, and turned toward her. Her armor was splattered with vorcha blood, especially around her forearms. Cold eyes peered back at him from behind her visor. She dropped the spent missile launchers in her hands.

"That was . . . a hell of a piece of work," he said, and she nodded.

"We should track down and kill the rest," she said, recovering her discarded rifle.

"No need," Shepard said, shaking his head. "Our objective is to activate the fans and get this cure distributed. Once we've purged the plague, the vorcha will flee."

She stared back at him for a few moments before nodding.

"Very well, Commander."

* * *

Eight hours later, Professor Mordin Solus stepped onto the _Normandy_, and after a debriefing with Shepard, strode through the laboratory doors, led by Jacob.

"Lab is right here," he said. "Facility is fully stocked, and the armory is right down the hall, as you saw when you came in here, so if you need any weapons or tools fabricated, it's right there for you."

"Excellent," Mordin said, a smile on the professor's face as he peered around the lab. He paused as he saw the other occupant.

She had switched back over to Allison immediately after returning to the ship, and had only paused to strip out of her armor and leave it in the armory while the professor had been debriefed and introduced. They did, after all, have work to do, and she didn't need to shower right away because she'd disabled her epidermal layer's sweating functions and other excretions during combat. Thus the civilian clothes she wore underneath - a simple white shirt and trousers - were rumpled by the armor, and her hair was flat from being cooped up in the helmet. She was sitting at her terminal, fingers moving over the haptic interface while her wireless connection was attached to her ear.

"You'll be sharing this space with Doctor Young," Jacob added, and Mordin nodded.

"Of course. Some time since worked with others. Refreshing experience. Looking forward to it."

"I'll leave you two to it then," Jacob added, and stepped back out of the room. Mordin didn't wait for him to leave, but immediately started moving around the lab, checking all of the equipment. His omnitool lit up as she scanned items, and he paused next to one of the tables. He tapped a key and there was a small flash and a burst of smoke.

Allison looked up, and her brow furrowed in automatic response.

"I already swept the lab for bugs," she said.

"Quite thoroughly," Mordin confirmed. "Some devices better hidden. Cerberus skilled at surveillance. Not as skilled as STG." He smirked.

"I'll need to do a sweep again," she said, pitching her voice with annoyance to match her expression.

"Redundancy is . . . usually superior," Mordin said, then shrugged. "In some cases, not so much."

She nodded and disconnected the feed from her ear connection. Allison had weighed whether or not she should tell him about her true nature, thinking about it extensively for seventeen entire minutes. Only Shepard, Miranda, and Jacob knew, and the rest of the crew thought she was human. However, if they were going to work together in the field, he would need to be aware of the truth.

Allison rose and started to speak.

* * *

"Doctor Solus," Allison said, and Mordin looked up at the human female. She seemed far smaller out of her armor, and even lighter than most salarians, including himself. "I need to explain some things. About me."

"Indeed? What sort?" Mordin asked as he activated the terminal before him.

"About what I do, and my role on the team, and who I am," she said.

"Already know. Synthetic lifeform," he said, fingers tapping at the keyboard without pausing.

Allison stood stock still for a moment, and Mordin looked up at her. He smiled for a moment, but it quickly faded as he realized he must have upset her.

"How did you know?" she asked.

"Didn't _actually_ know, only suspected, no confirmation," he assured her. "Educated guesswork, based on many disparate facts from collected research. Some while at clinic, most while on shuttle to Normandy. Not all readily apparent. Only developed theory within last few minutes."

"Like what?" she asked, and his eyes focused on her again. She was concerned. Or seemed to be. Hard to tell with humans. Impressive capacity to fake emotion - or perhaps feel emotion, the doctor evaluated. Some AI were theoretically capable of that.

"External appearance," he said, holding up one finger. "Doctorates in advanced and theoretical computer sciences, AI research, advanced information networks. Most humans unable to hold that many degrees without being in thirties. External appearance suggests just out of teens. Possible prodigy, possible age reduction treatment. _Not_ indicative of artificial nature - by itself, at least."

Mordin started pacing across the lab.

"Noted heavily-shielded suit," he continued, raising another finger. "Blocked biometrics scanning. Possible attempt to hide unusual body structure, cybernetics, maybe exceptional shielding. Curious, but not indicative." He paused, and raised his thumb. "When was synched with shipwide crew biometrics, noticed yours were not available. No life signs from your armor."

"I suppose that would be a clue," Allison remarked, and Mordin nodded. An AI that understands sarcasm. Sadly rare.

"Checked medical records. None for Doctor Allison Young. Intriguing. Noted biometrics inside ship. Zero carbon dioxide exhalation. Collated data. Reached conclusion just before you attempted to confess." He smiled slightly. "Apologies."

"Accepted," she said after a moment, and a small smile appeared on her face. Genuine? Possibly reactions and responses indicated emotional construct or coding. Self-created? He started to postulate why an AI like Doctor Young would want to create such coding, but shelved that line of speculation as she continued.

"I believed salarian mores placed emphasis on different kinds of secrets," Allison said. "That certain kinds were not to be sought out."

"True," Mordin replied. "Concluded your secret was type to be puzzled out, among Normandy crew at least. Already determined that Shepard, Operative Lawson aware of nature by observing interaction. Operative Taylor either more accepting or unaware. Upon investigating, suspected would wish to reveal anyway. Wouldn't have pried further if you did not wish to explain, however. Understand need for privacy, prejudice against synthetic lifeforms. Geth, AI, et cetera. Will keep secret secured."

"Thank you," Allison said. "For explaining."

"Don't mention it," he replied. "Understand we have work to do, samples to observe?"

"I mostly do artificial intelligence research," Allison said, and Mordin nodded.

"Of course. Mostly educational, constructive, engineering, data processing, electronics. Fewer samples and cultures to deal with," he said. "Seeker swarm samples available for analysis. Machines. Might be useful for study."

"Shepard did bring back some modified medical and weapons technology," she said. "he wanted me to begin working on equipment for the crew."

"Good point," Mordin said, nodding. "Must maintain technical edge." He scratched his chin. "Split work. You cover mechanical analysis and upgrades?"

"Sure," she agreed. "And you'll look at the biology angle? Examine the biological samples?"

"Yes. Excellent." He held out a hand, and she took it. Her grip was strong. "With partner, unlikely to blow up ship while experimenting!"

* * *

**_Author's Notes: _**The big challenge in this chapter was one that I've encountered a lot when putting to text something that is experienced individually. Writing out all of Shepard's team stomping their way through the district would rapidly get boring. In-game it is quite a bit of fun, but in text, writing scene after scene where Shepard and his squad blast apart squads of vorcha in a constant barrage of gunfire and tech and biotics would get very dull. I tried to avoid that. I'm really trying to avoid rehashing canonical events, which is why I tend to skip over conversations that happen in canon, unless they are immediately relevant to Cameron/Allison's experiences. Since Cameron/Allison can simply store data and review it later for details, this actually makes things a lot simpler.

Another big challenge in this chapter is writing from _Cameron's_ perspective as opposed to Allison's. The latter has a sense of self that places value on her name, whereas the former _doesn't_. When Cameron goes into combat mode, she doesn't think of herself as "Cameron." Writing with nothing but pronouns to reference the self is a bit troublesome. Also, describing that big room at the climax of Mordin's recruitment mission is hard.

We'll be breaking from canon soon in a few chapters when the effects of Cameron's perspective and presence will start to be felt. However, we're not likely so see drastic deviations from the progression of ME2's story, mostly because this story is more personal. (_Renegade_, on the other hand, covers a much broader perspective, and will rapidly and dramatically deviate even more from canon than it already has.) I'm not going to be covering every mission in the game in this story, but I will be covering the ones that would be most interesting to see from Cameron/Allison's perspective - especially the ones relating to quarians and the geth.

Until next chapter . . . .


End file.
